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Success With Alfalfa 



at One - Tenth 
the Usual Gost 



By J* N. SHIRLEY 



INDIANAPOLIS, INDIANA 
1920 






Copyright 1920 

By J. N. SHIRLEY 

116 South Emerson Ave. 

Indianapolis^ Ind. 



©CU5.65O08 



Mi 




Fig. 32 — Goddess Alfalfa, Enlightening the World. 

"Deep in the ground beyond the depths of the roots of ordinary 
crops, alfalfa seeks out and makes available untold wealth of soil 
fertility. As a host to bacterial life, it is the means of extracting 
from the atmosphere an ihexhaustible supply of nitrogen to enrich 
the soil for its successors in crop rotation. Prom its bountiful har» 
yests it has made possible the development of the great live stock 
industries of the country. In fact, the actual results from this truly 
wonderful plant are nothing l^ss than a fairy tale come true."— i 
Philo K. Blinn. 



Introducing the Author 



Mr. Shirley thought, after he decided to become an author, that some- 
body ought to introduce him to the public and he asked me to do it. 

1 have known him several years. The first time I saw him, he had some 
alfalfa in his fist. Alfalfa was then new to me. I have never seen him since when 
he did not have alfalfa along with him. I do not know that he eats it, for I have 
never seen him at meals, nor do I know whether he takes it to bed with him, 
for I have never seen him in bed. 

He talks to everybody he meets about alfalfa, but seeing how impossible it 
is to meet everybody, in order to talk to them about alfalfa, he could not keep 
from writing a book, so that everybody he does not talk to may learn what he 
knows about alfalfa, if desired. What he does not know about alfalfa will 
probably not be found in books. What he does know about alfalfa he did not 
find in books. As he tells you, he has been growing alfalfa and watching it and 
studying it for over twenty years, and that is how he learned his lesson so well. 

If he says that alfalfa will grow in a stone quarry, you will find it true. 
All that he says about alfalfa he knows by experience. If he has what you call 
theories, they are built on practices and you do not have to practice on his 
theories, or try them to see if they will work out. He has done that for you. 
All you have to do is to follow his book. If you do it the way he does it and the 
way he tells you to do it, you will get the same results he gets. He does not 
pretend to be anything but a common farmer. He has simply been a close- 
observing farmer, especially when it comes to alfalfa. He has watched how 
nature handles alfalfa and tells you that after twenty years of this, he knows 
now what he really knew, and what every other farmer ought to have known 
twenty years ago. 

As you can easily see, he is not trying to make any money off his book. 
If he were, he would charge $5.00 for it instead of $1.00. If it does good, as he 
hopes it will, it will be his little monument, he says; a little legacy, also, he 
has left to the world he has found so interesting, especially the part of it 
that grows alfalfa. The little book is worth its weight in gold to any 
farmer who is growing, or would like to grow alfalfa. 

H. S. O'BRIEN. 
Indianapolis News, 
Indianapolis, Indiana, 
April 19. 1919. 

P. S. — I learn since writing the above, that Mr. Shirley pleads guilty to 
eating alfalfa between meals and he says: "Girls eat alfalfa to make them 
pretty, but, of course, some don't need it." 



A LETTER TO THE SECRETARY OF MISSOURI STATE 
BOARD OF AGRICULTURE 

Indianapolis, Ind., May 20, 1918. 
Mr. Jewell Mayes, 

Secretary Missouri State Board of Agriculture, 
Jefferson City, Mo. 
Dear Sir: — 

I have just read "The Calf Path" in the Missouri, 1917, Year Book, that 
you sent me several months ago. I have always regarded this as a truthful 

picture of habit: 

"They followed still his crooked way 
And lost one hundred years a day." 

To prove to you that vastly more than "one hundred years a day" are 
lost by the farmers of the United States in sowing alfalfa, according to the 
"regulation - cultivation - all-summer-sow-it-just-before-a-drought-comes-plan, I 
enclose a few alfalfa plants from last February (1918) seeding on "honey- 
combed" corn stubble ground with no cultivation, except what Jack Frost did, 
free of charge last winter. These plants are taken .from poor, hard, white 
clay that had been hauled in from the street. 

Will also send a stem of April 5, 1915, seeding on sun-cracked corn and oats 

stubble ground. No cultivation. 

Yours truly, 
116 S. Emerson Ave. J. N. SHIRLEY. 



(Reply) 

MISSOURI STATE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE 

Office of the Secretary, 
3rd Floor of New State Capitol 

Jfetferson City, Mb. 
Mr. J. N. Shirley, 
116 S. Emerson Ave.", 
Indianapolis, Indiana. 

Dear Friend: — 

Your letter of May 20th I read with thrilling interest. The "Calf Path" 
does truly express the habits and the tendencies of good old human nature. 
You have beyond the shadow of a doubt solved one of nature's problems with 
reference to the planting and development of alfalfa. The fact that people do 
disagree with you does not change the truth of it One bit. The plants you send 
are unanswerable witnesses to the truth of your experiences. 

I am sending to you under separate cover, not being sure that they reached 
you the other time, our last four bulletins. 

I am also sending you to make doubly surfe, an alfalfa bulletin issued 
some time ago, which is not strictly up to date at this hour — but has some 

splendid stuff in it. 

Yours for Big Victory Crops, 

JEWELL MAYES, 

Secretary. 
Mav 22, 1918. 
JM:CS 

P.S. — I am going to put you upon the regular mailing list that you may 
receive our bulletins from time to time and the Year Book when it does come out. 




Fig. 2 -Harvesting 5 Year-Old Alfalfa in West Indianapolis, Summer of 1918 




Fig. 12— Alfalfa Products on "Alfalfa White Face Farm". Lebanon, Ind. J. N. Shirley, Owner 

"Study Alfalfa and Live Stock, for they are wonderfully and profitably 
made." 



SUCCESS WITH ALFALFA 

AT ONE-TENTH THE USUAL COST 



By J. N. SHIRLEY, Alfulfaist 
Indianapolis, Indiana 



Caesar says: "All Gaul is divided into three parts." This book is not "all 
gall," yet it is divided into three parts — "The Circus," the "Side Show" and the 
"Hash Department." Not long ago I heard a lecturer say that during the war 
he, at one of Uncle Sam's cantonments, saw a large tank of hash and he said 
to the over-six-foot colored cook: "How do you make hash?" The reply was: 
"Mistah, we don't make hash, it just accumulates." Part of this book has 
"just accumulated," so we call it the "Hash Department." All the three de- 
partments are intended to be short enough for both the busy man and the 
professional idler to read them; but the careful reading of only one section 
will give a comprehensive idea of the whole book, and will form the frame- 
work of the whole structure, which it is hoped will be thought out to com- 
pletion by the reader, for, "As a man thinketh, so is he." Thinking and doing 
make the man; and the man must think he can succeed with alfalfa, and he will. 

You may wonder why the writer has gone to so much expense to procure 
half tone illustrations in this book, but there are so many "Doubting Thomases," 
and so many men "from Missouri" — and other states — that "have to be shown," 
I mean to show them actual photographs and if these pictures and testimonials 
don't convince them, they are invited to come to Indianapolis and see the real 
alfalfa from ten days to seven years old ; but I am not sure that this will have 
much effect, because many farmers see my alfalfa fields every few days, and 
yet do not raise alfalfa. They say it don't make a paying crop in Indiana, 
because it is not thick enough. I tell them I don't care how thin it is, if it 
brings $100 an acre per year, in the rough, and that is what it does, even at 
$20.00 a ton for hay; while I sometimes get $30.00 to $33.00 per ton for 
alfalfa, and it makes five or six tons per acre at the four cuttings a year. I 
often get two tons or more at. one cutting, and one time I cut a piece of March 
seeded alfalfa five times in one season. In 1918, I finished cutting alfalfa on 
November 12th, and if our present warm, showery weather continues through 



SUCCESS WITH ALFALFA 



April, I think this same alfalfa will he ready to cut for hay hy May 5th or 
sooner. I have cut alfalfa for hay on the 14th of May, and I have cut alfalfa 
for hay just sixty days from May seeding. Later; July 5, 1919, the "warm 
weather" didn't last; but the second crop is now knee high on this (November 
12, 1918, cut) piece, and will be cut in a few days. 

On February 22, 1917, I sowed alfalfa on "honey-combed" corn stubble and 
potato ground, in Monroe County, Indiana, and on July 2, 1917, I found some 
of these alfalfa plants 19% inches high and blooming out. New sprouts, or new 
lungs, at base of plants were about one inch long, and the alfalfa was just 
exactly right to cut for hay. I thought I had a chance to be patriotic in those 
war times, by sowing alfalfa on Washington's birthday, and cutting it for hay 
on the Fourth of July, but I was doomed to disappointment, as will be explained 
hereafter in this book. I want the reader to think as he reads these lines, so 
I won't tell him just now, why I was disappointed, but will do so, later. 

Right here, I will ask the reader to look at Figure No. 1, and ask him- 
self how many plants like this can grow on one square foot of ground. There 
are many things I might tell you right here, but it is better for you to think 
them out for yourselves. 



ALFALFA ROTATION 

Farmers are mistaken when they think alfalfa can not be killed 
out, and used in a "rotation." By pasturing alfalfa when the ground 
is frozen, the crowns are killed by trampling of live stock; and the "turning" 
is easily done by deep plowing, as thus the sharp plotv sliare strikes a smaller 
part of the alfalfa root and strikes it in hard ground, also. I would suggest 
that 5 or 10 acres of alfalfa be sown each year, for five or six years, breaking 
strip No. 1 as scon as blue grass encroaches. Raise 100 bushels of corn per 
acre, for two or three years, then sow No. 1 to wheat and break No. 2 for 
corn, etc. I am sure more corn and more wheat can be raised on fewer acres, 
if planted on alfalfa sod, in this manner, leaving out the wheat (which would 
be too rank on alfalfa sod) , until two (or three) crops of corn are raised, to 
use up the surplus nitrogen that the alfalfa gathers. 

Try this plan and see how it works. It is new to me, in part, but I be- 
lieve it will work. By this plan one does not have to "sow wheat so often to 
follow rotation;" and it is generally understood that "wheat doesn't 
pay except to seed to clover;" and wheat often kills the clover or alfalfa by 
robbing it of needed moisture and plant food. I know this by actual ex- 
perience. Two years ago, from March seeding (as before stated), I had a 
good stand of alfalfa in ten acres of wheat, and in twenty-eight acres of 
rye. We had a four-weeks' drouth about harvest time; and that fall I had 
no alfalfa except where the corn shocks had been in the wheat field, and in 
the rye, I had no alfalfa, except in one "corn row," where the drill failed to 
sow any rye, while in that "row" the alfalfa was knee-high and bloomed out. 
It is claimed that raising a bushel of wheat costs $2.01. If this is true, would 
it not be better for a while to sow $30.00 clover seed, or $25.00 alfalfa seed, 
in corn stubble, or wheat stubble, "honey-combed" ground, in February or 
March, and not have the wheat or rye for so-called "nurse crops?" I feel 
sure that this rotation "alfalfa, corn and wheat" can be kept up almost 
indefinitely by sowing alfalfa on disked (or undisked) wheat stubble in winter. 
The disking, though, should be done soon after harvest, if it is done at all. 



SUCCESS WITH ALFALFA 



"IF" YOU PLOW, PLOW EARLY 

With due respect to the fellow who is "shocked" hy the "slip-shod method 
of seeding alfalfa" and who refuses to use a solid seed bed, except one of his 
own making, I would suggest that he do his plowing, dragging, harrowing, 
rolling, etc., early, say just after harvest so the rains will help settle the 
seed bed; but this is an idle suggestion, as you want to make the solid seed 
bed yourself or you would never plow up oats stubble,- wheat stubble, tomato 
ground, bean ground, etc., to make a seed bed for alfalfa. If you must plow 
and cultivate the ground, why not do it early and after you Jhave cultivated 
it as long as you like then let it alone until Jack Frost has put on the finishing 
touches, when, if I were doing it, I would sow the seed thinly on honey- 
combed ground and let Jack cover the seeds for me. But really, I don't see 
the need of all this hard work when oats stubble ground, at least, is already 
smooth and solid and nearer fres from weeds before you plow it than it will 
be as soon as you bring up to the surface fresh weed seeds water-soaked and 
ready to grow before your dry -alfalfa seed can germinate. 




Fig. 19— Cutting- Second Crop Alfalfa Same Year of Seeding, 1912. 

Surely, if you will study the photographs in this book, you will be con- 
vinced that winter seeding of alfalfa is a success; and why not, when clover is 
almost universally sown en "honey-combed" ground in February or March? 
You ought to be convinced, also, that the "no crop of alfalfa the first year" 
theory is exploded when you look at Figures 19, 4, 17, 31, 30 and 2 in this 
book. There is some excuse for turning under a ccrn stubble field to level it, 
if the corn was cultivated by the deep cultivation method, with wide shovel^ 
that ridged the corn, but why have these ridges and deep root pruning? 
Ridges dry out worse than level ground does; and root pruning certainly doesn't 
pay. Ridges are relics of old time plowing when this method of ridging was 
used to drain the land, or at least, it was used to get the corn up out of the 
water; and I admit it is hard to break away from old customs, however obso- 
lete; but it can be done and should be done if shallow, level cultivation is 
better for the crops grown and needed in preparation of the seed bed for 
alfalfa that can be so easily and cheaply sown in corn stubbles in winter, thus 
getting the benefit of all the early rains and gentle sunshine to push the 
alfalfa so it will withstand the droughts of summer and the rigors of winter. 
Look at Figure 32, "Goddess, Alfalfa, Enlightening the World." The "torch" 
is a youthful alfalfa plant of only five years of age, while the "sword" 
is composed of infant alfalfa plants of last March seeding, only 5V 2 months 
old; seeding done in March, 1919, and photo taken September 13, 1919. This 
"infant alfalfa" was cut first for hay on June 18, 1919, knee high, and again 
on July 23, 1919, only six inches high, on account of the alfalfa "yellows." 
Prompt cutting cured "yellows," and alfalfa made two more crops the firsl 
year. 



SUCCESS WITH ALFALFA 



Look at the third crop and see for yourself whether it is worth while or not. 
Compare this picture (the "sword") with Figure 31, which represents Feb- 
ruary sown alfalfa, second crop, grown by a new alfalfa man at Qnionville, 
Monrce County, Indiana, and then decide whether alfalfa really fails to pro- 
duce a crop the first year or not. Remember that Figure 31 is reproduced 
from a photo taken August 17, 1919, and Mr. C. N. Stidd, the grower, says 
if any one wants to write him about his first alfalfa crop, he will answer their 
questions (but don't forget the stamps, please). 



ALFALFA CONVERTS 

Here I will give you a few thoughts of some of my self-styled "converts," 
as expressed in their own words. If necessary, you can write briefly to any' 
of these men, but alivays enclose a few extra stamps, for a reply, as they are 
busy men, and hard thinkers. I saw one of my "converts" yesterday, at 
Bloomington, Indiana, who said he had no fault to find with my way of seed- 
ing alfalfa, but he had been greatly annoyed by so many letters of inquiry 
with no stamps enclosed, etc. I personally sowed some fifteen acres of alfalfa 
for this man in March, 1917, immediately after sowing some for Dr. F. E, 
Manker, of Indianapolis, whose letter I will use soon. With the help of a 
strong young man who took Mr. S. and myself out to the edge of Blooming- 
ton in a taxi, I pulled up a few alfalfa plants that had tillered out wonder- 
fully, and I brought same home with me, today (April 15, 1919). Mr. "S." 
has a good stand of alfalfa; but, like about 97% of all other men, he thinks 
his alfalfa is not thick enough. He will find out as his alfalfa tillers out 
more, and the bunches thus get larger, he will have a still thinner stand, or 
fewer bunches of alfalfa to the square yard, than he has now; but what of 
it? He will have more stems from the fewer, but larger plants. He is 
different from the rest of the 97%, in the fact that he has not plowed up his 
"too thick" alfalfa, because some of it has turned yellow, like so many do; 
or, rather, he has not plowed up his seemingly too thin alfalfa, because I 
sowed it for him, and I did not use the proverbial 20 pounds of seed per acre, 
putting 100 seeds to the square foot, and his alfalfa did not turn yellow at all. 



A FEW LETTERS FROM SOME OF MY "CONVERTS" 

Dr. Frank E. Manker, 712 Odd F*ellow Building. 

Indianapolis, Ind., March 24, 1919. 
Mr. /. N. Shirley, 
Indianapolis, Ind., 
Dear Sir: — 

The field that you sowed in alfalfa for me in March, 1917, came up in 
fine shape. Last year we cut four crops from it and it was excellent. 

When sowed the field had been in corn the year before and it was not 
even disked or ploughed at all. The ground was honey-combed from the frost 
when sowed and I could not have gotten a nicer stand. At first, the weeds 
seemed to take it and I thought they would do so, but after cutting the first 
crop, weeds and all, close to the ground just as new sprouts were starting, 
the second crop was clean and entirely free from weeds. 

Mr. Shirley's mode of sowing is entirely satisfactory to me. 

Yours, 
(Signed) F. E. MANKER. 



SUCCESS WITH ALFALFA 9 

Dr. Manker had tried (by the old plan' for several years to raise alfalfa 
on this farm (at Mooresville, Ind.,) but failed. So he, like the Blooming- 
ton "convert," insisted that I, personally, sow the seed for him and after- 
ward name my own price. Both these "converts" are well satisfied. 

UNITED STATES ENCAUSTIC TILE WORKS. 

Mr. J. N. Shirley, Indianapolis, Ind., February 8, 1919. 

116 S. Emerson Ave., 
Indianapolis, Indiana. 
My Dear Sir : — 

It gives me much pleasure to acknowledge my debt to you for putting me 
in the way of getting a set of alfalfa by sowing on honey-combed wheat 
ground. Like most farmers who had had no experience, I imagined alfalfa 
such a tender thing, the thought of treating it as clover appalled me. I had 
witnessed so many attempts through long, expensive soil preparation, only 
to see it fail, that I adopted your method with misgiving; however, casting all 
fears aside, with your advice, I got a good stand on thirty acres, which pro- 
duced three fine crops a year for five years; but, at first, I had to give an 
"ultimatum" to my tenant to keep him from "plowing up the weedy alfalfa." 

May I therefore thank you for your crusade in behalf of the best and 
.most profitable crop that can be raised on a farm; and at the same time 
encourage you to continue your efforts to take fear from the heart, and advise 
the sowing of alfalfa anywhere and everywhere, at most any time, to the up- 
building of soil and profits for the farmer. 

Cordially yours, 

W. F. LANDERS. 

This man must have used good judgment in selecting a showery year to 
sow alfalfa (or clover) "in wheat." I don't recommend either, but he fol- 
lowed my instructions in telling his man to "let the weeds alone until the 
harvest," instead of "clipping them high," as sometimes recommended by 
agricultural writers. 

Mr. Landers is one of the few farmers who benefit by even seeing ray 
alfalfa fields. Most of them say your alfalfa is too thin. They said this 
when I used to sow twenty pounds of seed per acre, and they still stick to it, 
like the man who was accused of calling another a liar, and denied it. "Yes, 
you did," said the accused. "Well, if I said it, I still stick to it," he replied. 
It seems to me that "corn belt" farmers ought to get on to this "one plant to 
the square foot habit" of alfalfa, but they don't. How would their corn yield 
if they planted it on hills two and one-half feet apart each way? It might 
"do" if they only put one grain of corn in each hill. Now look at Figures 1 
and 13 and think a little. 

MY FIRST ALFALFA 

I have raised alfalfa for over twenty years in Indiana, and, of course, I 
had the same failure with my first one and a half acres that nine-tenths of 
the farmers have; yet I did not fail at all. 1 will tell you how it was. I 
sowed too much seed; using twenty pounds per acre, putting one hundred 
seeds to the square foot. I cut seven crops the first two years, and then I 
thought my alfalfa was practically all dead (the next spring), with only one 
or two plants per square foot. I ought to have known that this was thick 
enough, but I didn't know much about alfalfa then. The alfalfa had tillered, 
or "stooled out," and had killed off the weaker plants; but was still thick 



W SUCCESS WITH ALFALFA 



enough, had I only thought so. I imagined it ought to be about as thick as a 
man's mustache, and I didn't think what the man would do if every hair on his 
upper lip should tiller out and produce one hundred to three hundred "stems," 
like alfalfa does if it has the chance. I told my wife I guessed the Boone 
County farmers were right — that "alfalfa could not be raised in Indiana," 
but I would tiy it again, so I double-disced my "dead" alfalfa patch both 
ways, lap harrowed it, sowed "twenty pounds" of seed per acre again and 
harrowed it in. The seeds germinated finely, but the old, thin plants that I 
had tried to kill were only cultivated and they stooled out still more, and I 
lost my seed; as the young plants were shaded by the old ones and smothered 
to death. In about thirty-five days, however, I harvested the heaviest alfalfa 
crop I ever saw — about three tons per acre — yet a neighbor said: "Alfalfa 
is a failure in Indiana." I asked why. He replied: "It is too thin," and 
I said, "I don't care how thin it is, if it makes three tons per acre at one 
cutting. I don't care if there are only three plants to the acre if it yields that 
way. But using a disc instead of a breaking plow is all that -prevented a real 
failure in my case with alfalfa. I learned to cultivate alfalfa by this ex- 
perience, but I prefer a spring tooth harrow instead of a disk. I learned an- 
other thing also — that alfalfa would grow on white clay ground often better 
than on the rich black soil which I thought, at first, was the only soil that 
would produce alfalfa. I tested it by sprinkling some seeds on white clay 
knolls and it did splendidly there. I should have learned, also, to sow less 
seed per acre, but from force of habit I kept on using the twenty pounds per 
acre, wondering all the time why I could not sow alfalfa in February or 
March, like they do clover on uncultivated ground. I once asked a Purdue 
man about this and he said: "Many farmers have tried winter seeding and 
failed." (I wonder if they never fail in the summer time.) I kept on 
"wondering" about winter seeding for fifteen years. (I am surprised at 
myself for this.) 

Seven years ago I sowed about twelve pounds of alfalfa per acre on corn 
stubble "honey-combed" ground, in March, and father said he would give me 
$50.00 per ton for all the hay I raised; but in July following, he said he had 
to "go back or go broke." I left the corn stubbles, weeds and all stand until 
the alfalfa had started new buds, at the base of the plants, for a new growth; 
then I mowed it, closs to the ground, killing the weeds; then the new sprouts 
or new alfalfa "lungs" burst into foliage at once, and kept the other weed 
seeds from germinating. The corn "stubbs" made good bedding and aired 
out the alfalfa. I still have alfalfa sown that way, in March, 1913, and 
will show a photo or two of this seeding. (See Figures 3, 32 and 2). In 
my first sown alfalfa I sowed little red clover and spring barley as a so-called 
"nurse crop," but' I cut it all for hay, not for grain. (I now think it was 

a "robber" crop.) 

INOCULATION. 

Of course, I inoculate the ground (using soil) if it is not already inocu- 
lated (as it is, sometimes, by sweet clover), and it generally pays to lime most 
of the land, too, for it nearly all needs lime. This can be easily tested by 
putting a little blue litmus paper in a ball of mud. If the paper turns red, 
lime is needed; the redder it turns the more lime needed. A better test is 
to use a little raw ground limestone on the alfalfa plants, noting the result. 
Once I put a few loads of raw ground limestone on the poorest spots of a 
twenty-acre field of alfalfa and it was not long until these poorest spots were 
the best, and they remained so. I use almost any ground that has been cul- 
tivated the year before, say, corn stubble, oats stubble, potato or tomato 



SUCCESS WITH ALFALFA 11 

ground, bean ground, etc., and I sow seed on "honey-combed" or frost-pitted 
ground in January, February or March; not on snow or hard-frozen soil. I 
have also sown on "sun-cracked," or "wind checked" ground, in April cr early 
May, and had splendid success, despite the fact that it did not rain for eight 
or ten days after seeding one ten-acre piece on the 5th of April, 1915; and 
the alfalfa did not come up until the weeds had a splendid start, but I wasn't 
uneasy, as I knew I could kill the weeds by close-cutting at the right time to 
have the new alfalfa growth keep them killed and I did cut a magnificent 
crop of weeds (and some alfalfa, too) the first time. I had a picture taken 
of this cutting, and the photographer said: "Do you call this an alfalfa 
field?" I said, "Yes." "Well," said he, "I call it a weed patch." I told him 
to come back in thirty days and take another picture of clean alfalfa; but 
he says the mowing machine was not going, and on that account he didn't 
take the picture, but he did take one of the third crop the second year in this 
same field. The hired man disobeyed orders and he cut part of this seeding 
before new sprouts or new lungs started and he killed the alfalfa. I cut the 
tall weeds spoken of above myself two weeks later, when new alfalfa sprouts 
were about one inch long, and this part of this alfalfa is still all right, but 
at first the other part was the better stand. (See Figures 4 and 5.) 

Also at Twenty-first and Montcalm Streets, Indianapolis, can be seen 
some alfalfa that I sowed in April, 1914, on "sun-cracked" corn stubble 
ground, without any cultivation, and I cut the fourth crop of alfalfa on this 
piece on November 12, 1918, and I fed it to the brood sows last winter. I 
always get four crops a year, and once I cut five alfalfa crops in one season, 
from March, 1913, seeding, which is still on the job. Part of this piece, last 
year (third crop) sold for $15 an acre, standing in the field, and made money 
for the buyer, too. I never leave a crop for "protection." Alfalfa doesn't 
need it, and field mice use the protection to their own advantage. I men- 
tion these facts so one may not feel discouraged if weeds do spring up in 
alfalfa; and if you think cold weather will hurt alfalfa, you can sow it in 
April or early May, on "sun-cracked" ground, but weeds always get a better 
start than if the seeding is done on "honey-combed" ground. This is evident, 
as they are already well under way before the alfalfa is sown. Alfalfa will 
grow as fast as any weed if sown in winter; then, it has at least an equal 
chance with the weeds. 

"A DISAPPOINTMENT." 

In the fore part of this little book I referred to my "disappointment" with 
alfalfa seeded on Washington's Birthday in 1917. The tenant failed to cut 
this crop on the 3rd of July as I directed him to do; he cut it three weeks 
later. When I asked him about it he said: "I set the mower knife high so I 
would not hurt the alfalfa." But he did hurt it by making the weeds thicker 
and by topping the second growth of alfalfa. Besides, the old stems had tried 
to mature seeds by that time, and this always exhausts the plants, especially 
so the first year; and this alfalfa was not as good the next April as it was 
in July before. 

In March, 1919, we sowed about forty acres of alfalfa on this 
farm, had a good stand, and a crop of alfalfa (and weeds) was cut at bud- 
ding time. The second crop started up nicely, I am told, then it turned 
yellow and "something went wrong with it." It was only cut the one time, and 
lack of cutting to cure the "yellows," no doubt, was the "something that went 
wrong with it." 



12 SUCCESS WITH ALFALFA 

My own March, 1919, seeded alfalfa in Marion county turned yellow 
after I had cut a knee-high crop on June 18; but I cut this yellow, only six- 
inch-high alfalfa on July 23, and it at once changed to a dark green color, and 
I cut a third crop, knee-high, on September 23, and this alfalfa grew almost 
knee-high again before hard freezes came. Once I had eighteen acres of two- 
year-old alfalfa that turned yellow before cutting the second crop. I cut 
and raked most of this twelve-inch high, yellow and red alfalfa, and I inocu- 
lated it at once, using soil from my first sown field of alfalfa, which had 
inoculated itself by that time, I supposed. This cutting, or inoculating, or 
both, had a wonderful effect on this sickly looking alfalfa, changing it to a 
dark green color, and it made two more nice crops that year. I knew noth- 
ing about the "alfalfa yellows" at that time, and I did not believe much in 
inoculation, either, but something had to be done to save the alfalfa and to 
relieve the case of "blues" that I had; and I think I "hit the nail on the 
head" by both cutting and inoculating ; but I had hard work to keep throwing 
that soil up into the air as people passed, stopping only long enough to ask 
what we were doing, then dropping their heads and driving on, no doubt 
thinking very little of our experiment; but a few days changed all this and 
converted me, at least, to the inoculation theory, and I have shipped six tons 
of inoculated soil for my own use and many tons to others, from Vermont to 







Wym&w'-: '-'^feg^Mitala^ 



Fig. 4-Cutting First Crop, Alfalfa (and Weeds) 1915. Seeded on Sun Cracked Soil, 1915. 

Texas. It is claimed that "cultures" will inoculate alfalfa if used according 
to directions, but I failed to get good results from them; possibly it was my 
fault — I know inoculated soil is all right and it takes but little of it, as the 
bacteria soon spreads like a prairie fire, if 200 to 300 pounds of soil per acre 
are tossed up into the air to be blown over an alfalfa field. I apply soil after 
plants are started and can shade the ground a little and take hold of the 
bacteria at once. I have never harrowed inoculated soil in, nor sown it at 
time of seeding alfalfa. Some claim sunshine kills the bacteria, but I have 
seen this disputed, and I inoculated the eighteen acres spoken of on a hot, 
sunny day, but I had plenty of soil to use, from my own alfalfa field. 

From the above facts, I think it is clear that it pays to inoculate, lime 
and cut alfalfa at the right time. Always cut at budding time, unless "yel- 
lows" strike alfalfa, then cut at once, whether budded or not. Cultivation 
pays also, especially in dry seasons. 



SUCCESS WITH ALFALFA 13 



KIND OF SEED. 
I prefer Kansas or Nebraska non-irrigated alfalfa seed, yet I tried one 
acre of "German alfalfa" once, but did not like it (even before the war). The 
tap root of the common (U. S.) alfalfa penetrates to great depths and 
brings back to the surface leaclied and lost fertility. It drains land, also. 

CUFJNG ALFALFA. 
After alfalfa wilts a little in the swath, I rake it and sometimes bunch 
in small forkfuls, but I seldom shock it any more. Shocks don't turn water 
unless the hay is too green; and in case of rain the forkfuls can be moved 
and loosened up easier than the shocks can be spread out to dry. Of late 
years I have been using a side delivery rake, throwing two windrows together, 
and then I straddle them with a hay loader. This saves bunching or shock- 
ing, saves time and bleaching, and I like it better than nineteen "Hunyaks" 
and three "Niggers," counting myself as one of the "Niggers," and I 
have tried both. The little team you see (in Figure 2) handles* the loader 
easily until I have to stop to adjust the load; then the horses "get their 
wind" while I work, and so on. I use a man (on the ground) to straighten 
the windrows and to round the corners, clean up the hay that may fall off the 
wagon, and then he pitches the hay to me while I stack it, "shingle fashion." 
I mean this: After I have placed a mound of alfalfa in the middle of the 
foundation for the stack, or narrow rick, I begin at the outside of this mound 
(which is almost full size of rick) and place a layer of hay around it, lapping 
the upper part of the layer onto the outer edge of middle mound. I then 
put on another layer a little higher up, letting part of the thinner edge over- 
lap the outside layer, and so on. I let the out ends of layers hang down- 
ward as much as possible to run the water out, instead of running the rain 
into the stack. I don't tramp the outside at all, but keep the middle well 
tramped down, and always higher than the outside. This gives a good 
"settle" and alfalfa stacked this way will keep for years, as it forms a kind 
of "glue" on the outside that sheds the water almost like oil cloth. I like to 
widen or extend the rick a little to a height of six or eight feet before "draw- 
ing in" any, and the ends of rick should remain almost vertical to the last. 
I prefer ricking alfalfa in narrow ricks, instead of putting it into barns or 
sheds, unless the hay is to be fed to stock. Alfalfa is easier gotten out of 
stacks or z'icks, to be marketed, than out of barns or sheds, and the depre- 
ciation of building costs mora than the damage done to well stacked alfalfa; 
besides, the outside inch or two can be easily pounded off the rick by using 
the back of a fork, and it is good bedding for stock (if they don't eat it, 
which they will do, unless they get better hay). I think it pays better to 
use damaged alfalfa for bedding than it dees to use wheat straw for that 
purpose. It makes better manure, and raising alfalfa is better for the 
ground than raising wheat. I use a sharp, thin axe in lieu of a hay knife to 
cut the ricks in two; for me it is easier and faster. The axe should be drawn 
slightly to you as you strike. Cut from each outside to center of rick as the 
hay slants "down and out." I stand on a ladder when starting to cut a rick. 

RECAPITULATION 

Of late, I sow thinly, using not more than four or five pounds of best 
alfalfa seed per acre, on "honey-combed" ground, in winter, or on "sun- 
cracked" ground in April or May (never later than May). I let alfalfa 
religiously alone until new "lungs" or new sprouts at base of plants are about 
one inch long; then I cut it at once close to the ground and rake as soon as 



H SUCCESS WITH ALFALFA 



wilted a little. Don't let alfalfa bake or bleach in the sun. This is in- 
jurious to the hay. Too much should not be cut at once; yet the cutting 
should be done quickly and at the right time. This is in the interest of the 
next crop, as well as for the present one. 

Stack it "shingle fashion," and by this time you are about ready to re- 
peat the process, if you have fifty acres or more to cut. (I have had over 
one hundred acres to cut four times a year, and I had to "get a move on me.") 
As soon as possible, it pays to get a side delivery rake and a drum (or "straw- 
carrier") loader, and not be bothered with shirking, high-priced help that de- 
mands pay for "time" instead of for "work done." Cultivate alfalfa, if you 
can, after each cutting except the last, beginning at one year old; use a 
spring tooth harrow or a narrow shovel corn cultivator, as these tools slip 
around the alfalfa roots and don't cut the crowns off, like the discs sometimes 
do. I have the best alfalfa cultivator I have ever used or seen. It is a 
"Massey-Harris." (I use mine to break corn ground also, unless it is sod 
ground.) (See Figure 10, Figure 30.) 

Put cotton in your ears when cultivating alfalfa and pay no attention 
to your neighbor who says: "You are ruining your alfalfa." If you culti- 
vate it thoroughly you will conserve the moisture and prevent blue grass 
coming into your alfalfa; and you will make old Mother Earth rich enough 
to produce one hundred bushels of corn per acre where you used to get only 
about fourteen bushels per acre when you turned under a timothy sod." I 
am convinced it pays better to raise 100 bushels of corn occasionally, on 
alfalfa sod, than thirty or forty bushels (or less) each year on poorer 
ground. 

VALUE OF ALFALFA 

The North Dakota Experimental Station says: "Two tons alfalfa hay 
equal 110 bushels oats." 

Uncle Sam says: "Alfalfa hay is worth, in feeding value, $10.76 a ton 
more than timothy hay." Horses and cattle will quit eating corn to eat 
alfalfa hay. Why not use a "little horse sense" and raise alfalfa? Disre- 
gard the statement of the man that never fed alfalfa who says: "It is hard 
on the horse's kidneys." Uncle Sam says: "Experimental data do not sub- 
stantiate this claim." Don't believe that alfalfa is "washy" or that it pro- 
duces "heaves" in horses. Alfalfa is just right; not "washy," nor constipat- 
ing, and it has no white fuzz on its stems to produce heaves. Alfalfa pro- 
duces three tons of hay to timothy's one ton, and it makes the ground richer, 
instead of poorer, as timothy does. Try it and see how this plan works. 
Study alfalfa and you will learn to t love it. Cover up some alfalfa stems 
and see them turn to roots, like raspben-y briers will do. You can thus fill 
vacant spots in your alfalfa where reseeding will fail because of shading of 
old plants. 



TILLERS OUT 

Look at Figure 1 again and see how wonderfully alfalfa will "tiller 
out" if it has room to do so. Study what is said in this book about clover 
"humbugging" the farmer by its "lying down habits" to cover up the naked 
rings around the plants, while alfalfa stands upright and shows those bare 
spots, just like corn does. Remember about "spilling wheat when you are 
filling up the grain drill?" Doesn't the wheat come up "nice and thick" in 
these spots? Doesn't it soon turn yellow and die? Why doesn't it live and 



^^ SUCCESS WITH ALFALFA 15 

mature grain like you expect alfalfa to do when you sow it as thick as the 
hairs on your upper lip? Sow alfalfa as thin as you would sow turnips. 
Cut only when new sprouts start, unless alfalfa turns yellow. If it turns 
yellow cut immediately and cultivate if possible. Cultivate, yellow or no 
yellow, if you have time to do so. It pays big to cultivate alfalfa after it is 
one year old, at least. 



SOME EXCUSES BUT NOT REASONS 

Some farmers say they don't have land enough to raise alfalfa. This 
is a very thin excuse, and the very reason they ought to raise it and make 
three acres out of one. Alfalfa often will bring $100 per acre, in the rough. 
What other crop will do it, with as little work? When I tell them this they 
point out some fellow that has failed with this crop. One man said his 
neighbor "had a border around his alfalfa field that had nothing on it." I 
think he should have said: "Nothing but grasshoppers." One city man who 
owns a farm said: "I would give almost anything for a fine field of alfalfa." 
I asked him why he did not sow it some still frosty morning and he said that 
several of his neighbors had tried alfalfa and failed. "Nelse K.," he said, 
"tried it several times and he never had a stand worth a fiddle." One alfalfa 
failure, I am sorry to say, is more potent than a dozen successes. When I 
ask these fellows why they don't pattern after some one who succeeds with 
alfalfa, they say: "There is something different in your field from ours." 
"Yes," I tell them, "a different man, that's all." If I should set my mowing- 
machine high and cut the weeds off at random, like they do, or if I plowed 
my alfalfa up because it was weedy or turned yellow (from too thick seed- 
ing), I would not raise alfalfa either. Some say "Alfalfa froze out in the 
winter of 1915-'16." So did red clover, but they still raise it. 



Don't Criticise the Creator 

There is another thing that I don't do, that many farmers do. I don't 
try to change the nature of the alfalfa plant. I don't insinuate that the 
Almighty didn't know what he was doing when he made alfalfa to stand 
upright instead of sprawling out on the ground like clover does, but the 
farmer (as Barnum used to say) likes to be "humbugged." He thinks clover, 
is thick because it looks so, but it isn't. I would as soon have alfalfa stand 
upright and open up, like umbrellas, or be like inverted cones, and fill the air 
spaces above, letting the naked rings of surface around the base of plants, be 
naked, and get two tons of hay per acre, or more (sometimes) at one cutting, 
and continue these cuttings all summer and fall; I say I would as soon do 
this as to see the spaces covered on the ground around the sprawling clover 
plants that make but one crop of hay, and a short seed crop for one year, 
and then die; while alfalfa will go right on, making four crops a year for 
almost a lifetime. Coburn says: "Alfalfa has been known to live for over 
two hundred years," (but I have not tried it that long) . 



Thick or Thin Stands 

Clover grows no thicker than alfalfa, but it looks thicker, and it seems 
to make but little difference to the farmer, so long as it looks "good and 
thick." He sows three or four times too much clover seed, too, as well as 
alfalfa seed, and he gets the worst kind of weeds, because superfluous alfalfa 
plants or too many clover plants are nothing but the worst of weeds, and 



16 



SUCCESS WITH ALFALFA 



are harder to get rid of than cockle burrs, dock, jimson, rag weeds, horse 
weeds, morning glcries, artichokes, wild lettuce, smart weeds, or almost any- 
thing else, except Canada thistles and buck horn. You can kill all of these 
but the last two with the mowing machine, without injuring your alfalfa, 
but you can not kill the "too numerous" alfalfa or clover plants and leave 
what you want. These superfluous plants put up a stiff fight, as they "think" 
they have as good a right to live as the others; they require, the same kind 
of plant food, and are affected by the same conditions that the others are, 
while to kill the common weeds, all you have to do is to mow them close to 
the ground, just as the new alfalfa sprouts, or "new lungs" are ready to 
burst into foliage, to keep the weeds killed. Most farmers get around this 
trouble by simply plowing (not cultivating) up their weedy, or yellow 
alfalfa, saying, "My land is not adapted to alfalfa." The clover plant also 
kills off its useless, encroaching neighbor, but it does it "under cover." It 
humbugs the farmer by sprawling out upon the ground, so that part of its 
branches are left after mowing, to still humbug him, while the alfalfa plant 
that has tillered out, making two hundred to four hundred stems, and has, 
of course, killed several weaker and useless plants around it, is condemned 
by the farmer because it stands upright, allowing him to cut all its branches, 
thus furnishing more hay than the clover does. This farmer reminds me 
of the horse buyer when I told him I had a good horse to sell, who said: "I 
don't want to buy a good horse. I' want to buy one that looks good." 




Pit 



-Cutting Third Crop, Second Year, 1916. (See Figtf 1.) 



No "Nurse Crops," So-Called, for Alfalfa 

There are no nurse crops; they are robber crops. Once I sent an article 
to a leading live stock jcurnal under the heading "Weeds as a Nurse Crop for 
Alfalfa." In that article I stated I would rather have weeds than barley, 
rye, oats or wheat, for a nurse crop for alfalfa, because I didn't hesitate to 
cut weeds at any time to suit the welfare of the alfalfa plant, but if I had 
a grain crop, I might wait too long in order to secure the grain, and I might 
cut it at the wrong time. I told of waiting once, on a piece of April, 19.15, 
"sun-cracked" seeding until the weeds were four and a half feet high in order 



SUCCESS WITH ALFALFA 17 

to find the new lungs, or new sprouts, one inch long, on the alfalfa, before 
cutting. In fact, the weeds were from four and a half to six feet high, but 
I said four and a half, as I wanted to be believed. Soon after this article 
appeared in print I received a letter from the editor containing another letter 
from a lawyer. The editor asked if I could do anything for this man, and 
he added: "I was away from the office when your article was printed." 1 
replied, "That is a pity, but when the cat is away the mice will play." This 
lawyer's letter eulogized the journal for doing so much good in the world, 
but said: "It is a shame to publish such articles as one J. N. Shirley of 
Marion County, Indiana, had in your paper a short time ago." He went on 
to say, "The idea of cutting weeds, four and a half feet high, when one 
might be cutting spring barley for hay." He said, "I don't believe Shirley's 
statements. His letter is windy, from begining to end. I think I know 
something about farming. I own four hundred and fifty acres of good 
land; am only forty-five years old, and never heired a dollar in my life." I 
replied, "I will make affidavit to any statement made in the article, and I 
give you, herewith, the names and postoffice address of some of the men that 
helped me put up the hay." I also said, "I will not call this man 'windy,' as 
he does me, for I see from his letterhead he is an attorney at law, at Vin- 
cennes, Inch, not far from Terre Haute." The other day I received a letter 
from a dairyman and farmer, near Chicago, who paid me a visit two years 
ago, and looked over my alfalfa fields until he said he "was tired of seeing 
alfalfa." He asked many questions, and I met him again at the International 
Live Stock Shew, in 1917, and he asked me what about his sowing some 
weedy corn stubble ground to alfalfa. I told him to sow it in February or 
March, on "honey-combed" ground. He asked would it not be better to 
plow the weeds under? I said no. The weed seeds will be there anyway, and 
the crop of weeds turned under would prevent a "solid seed bed" from being 
secured. Well, he has recently written me for prices on a car of alfalfa. 
In reply to my letter he thanked me for sending him a paper containing a 
marked alfalfa article and he said: "You. certainly make me 'sit up and 
take notice,' but I can't help thinking your land is better adapted to alfalfa 
than ours." This is a rather thin excuse, I think, for a dairy man not raising 
alfalfa, for alfalfa will grow to seme extent, at least, on any land that has 
air over it and water, under it, and this includes his farm. I know, for I have 
been there. 



Alfalfa on Worn-Out Clay Land 
About fourteen years ago I sowed alfalfa on an old worn-out clay farm 
that I bought and I was told that this particular fifteen-acre field had been 
in corn five years in succession. I lived on this farm four years and when 
I sold it I had thirty acres of alfalfa there. I had in the meantime persuaded 
a big dairyman, whose farm adjoined mine, on three sides, to sow a small 
piece of alfalfa on his rich land, but he soon decided "the weeds had taken it, 
and he plowed it up." Several winters later I was visiting at this man's 
son's, who had succeeded him in the dairy business, on part of this huge 
farm, and I said: "Mr. Jessup, do you know what I would do with this four 
acres of tomato ground if I had it?" "Put it in alfalfa, of course," he re- 
plied. And he said: "I am going to sow that little field to alfalfa this 
winter, just because you say so." The next fall I saw one of his boys in 
the city and asked him about the alfalfa and he replied: "We plowed it 
up. It was all weeds!" His father said to me later: "It would have been 



18 SUCCESS WITH ALFALFA 



alright if we had had sense enough to let it alone," for, said he, "there is a 
fringe of alfalfa around that field yet where we didn't plow it up." This 
man was then paying $60 a ton for what he called "June Pasture," or 
"Sucrene," and he hauls it fourteen or fifteen miles, when he can raise better 
feed on his own farm for $10 a ton, if he only thought so, and would let the 
weeds alone till the harvest." 

Alfalfa and Blue Grass 

I have frequently turned under the finest blue grass sod, sowed it to 
alfalfa and had the best pasture on earth, and the most of it, for soon after 
the alfalfa gets a good start, the blue grass comes up, and you have both, on 
the same ground, at the same time. The alfalfa is fine during summer 
drouths, when blue grass is dead, but the mowing, at budding time, must be 
done, pasture or no pasture, of course; as the new shoots must have all the 
root nourishment by being relieved of the old growth that produces seed, to 
still further exhaust the plant, not cut off, close to the ground, at the right 
time. Some say, "Don't pasture alfalfa at all," and I would not do it if I 
did not mow it every time the new growth starts, whether I take it up for 
hay or not. I have pastured alfalfa until snow comes (as late as December 
9th), but I turned off at night, putting the stock back after frcst had gone 
off the next morning so the crowns of plants would not be injured by 
trampling, while frcsted or frozen. On the 10th of May, 1904, I sowed eight 
acres of alfalfa on inverted blue grass sod, where I had planted corn, intend-* 
ing to harrow the corn a few times and plow it once or twice and sow alfalfa 
just before the last shallow plowing. I did not want to cultivate much and 
thus injure the blue grass, for I wanted blue grass and alfalfa, mixed, for 
pasture, instead of all blue grass in this fine sixteen-acre blue grass pasture. 
I did not expect much from the corn. On May 10th I found that this corn 
had been ruined by the cut worms. I, at once, sowed the alfalfa seed and 
harrowed it in. On the 14th of July the alfalfa was knee high and blooming 
out on this eight acres of all clay land (except a black soil spot, of about 
one-fourth acre, on which the fox tail was bad, and the alfalfa was only two 
inches high). The scattering corn stalks (about one-fifth of a stand) were 
immense, of dark green foliage, and looked like they would yield well, in 
spite of the lack of cultivation. On this account I hesitated to mow the. 
alfalfa for hay. I had noticed that stock would quit eating corn to eat 
alfalfa, and I supposed they would not molest the standing corn, so I turned 
eight calves and fifty shoats into this eight acres. I was right, but the 
alfalfa kept ahead of the fifty hogs and eight calves and tried to produce 
seed, which I thought would exhaust the plants. I went to a neighbor's and 
got a hundred and seventy-five sheep and turned them in, taking the eight calves 
off, but I put ten old sows into the field in their stead. Well, in two weeks 
the alfalfa was only one-half knee high, and the corn about the same! I 
turned all stock off and cut the alfalfa and corn stubs, close to the ground, 
leaving the cuttings on the ground. In one week the alfalfa had started up 
again, and I put the eight calves and sixty hogs back into the field, but the 
alfalfa got ahead of them again, so I turned in eighteen big Hereford cows 
and one Jersey cow, taking the eight calves off, as I did not let them run 
with their dams. The nineteen cows and sixty hogs did fine on this alfalfa, 
without any grain, until Tuesday before Thanksgiving, when I turned off for 
the winter, and the next April I never saw a nicer "field of green" than this 
eight acres was. Of course, the stock, the hogs especially, would have 
relished just a little corn with this alfalfa, the same as we like meat or butter 



SUCCESS WITH ALFALFA 



ID 



with our bread, and they ran across the other half of this sixteen acres of 
close grazed blue grass, but they "paid most of their respects" to the alfalfa 
after July 14th, I assure you, and all told, there were 262 head of stock on 
that eight acre of alfalfa "the first year." That same winter I sold this farm 
and the new owner killed the alfalfa by pasturing it, winter and summer. 
He said "Corn is King" and he plowed up thirty acres of alfalfa meadow and 
planted corn. (Part of this thirty acres of alfalfa may be seen in shocks 
south of the Hereford cows (Figure 12). He says he raised about ninety 
bushels of corn per acre on that field three years in succession. He soon got 
rid of all the fifty-eight acres of alfalfa on that farm, and I suppose, should 
he sow alfalfa now on that place he would "plow it up, because it got 
weedy, or turned yellow," from too thick seeding, and would say, "My land 
is not adapted to alfalfa," but he raises corn, corn, corn, oats and corn! Of 
course the land is not rich now like it was then. 




Fig. U^-Eight Hereford Calves. Mentioned in This Book and raised on 
"Alfalfa White Face Farm", Lebanon, Ind. 



DON'T BE DISCOURAGED ABOUT WEEDS IN ALFALFA, 
Five years ago a cousin of mine sowed two acres of alfalfa and 
abandoned it. By paying for the seed used (which was furnished by the 
owner of land) I got possession of the two acres of "cockle-burs." By 
cutting at the right time and removing about a carload of burs, I had the 
hottest fire I ever saw and soon had a clean crop of alfalfa and 1 continued 
to mow it four times a year until my five-year lease expired on forty acres 
adjoining it, where I had had alfalfa for two years, before I induced him to 
raise "his burs." 

GRIMM ALFALFA. 

As before stated I prefer the common tap root alfalfa that goes down 
deep after leached and lost fertility and brings it back to the surface, thus 
enriching the soil, but some think the "Grimm" alfalfa will withstand freezing 
and thawing better than the tap root variety. I have never had the com- 
mon kind to winter kill but once, and that was only in patches, in the ex- 
treme winter of 1915 and 1916, when intense cold suddenly followed very wet 
Weather and the mud froze so quickly around thp crowns of alfalfa that deeper 



20 



SUCCESS WITH ALFALFA 



freezing jerked the roots in two, twenty inches under ground, before they 
had time to stretch, or the soil could be heaved up around the alfalfa plants, 
as is usually done in the winter. I had some Grimm alfalfa in the same 
field, or, at least, I suppose it was Grimm (from the "Octopus" like roots 
that the plants had), but these supposed Grimm plants which were mixed 
through these patches, were winter killed, just the same. I imagine that 
the Grimm alfalfa, being a surface feeder, will exhaust the soil sooner than 
the tap root variety. I know several farmers who had this same experience 
in 1915-16, and they now refuse to raise alfalfa on that account; yet, they 
see this matter illustrated every day, when the store keeper snaps his 
wrapping twine by a quick jerk, while a steady pull would cut his finger and 
only stretch the string. They should remember that this sudden change 
from mud to a hard frozen grip around the crown of the alfalfa plant enabled 
Jack Frost (who raises a building) to LIFT UP ON THIS FROZEN ball, 
until he snapped the roots in two, twenty inches under ground, in a hurry, 
rather than wait to stretch them, or pull them from a depth "'of" ten" to twelve 
feet. These same farmers have had several failures before and since, with 
little red clover, but still they raise it just the same (or sow it at least) and 
say, "My alfalfa froze out in winter of 1915 and '16, and I'm afraid to 
try it again." They sow clover in wheat or oats and let the drouth kill it at 
harvest if the "nurse crop" doesn't kill it sooner. 




Fig. 34. ROOT OF ALFALFA 
PLANT. This is an alfalfa root from 
Allegan County, Michigan. It measured 
over 17 feet long, and the end where it 
was broken off was as large around as 
one's little finger. Think of the humus 
added to the soil by the decay of a root 
like this. 

Alfalfa also makes at least 72 inches 
of top growth per year. 



Some don't sow alfalfa because it is harder to sell in the city market 
than timothy is. There is a certain, sure remedy for this, and that is to raise 
>io timothy. If no timothy were put on the market, most of these fellows 
will buy alfalfa; and they will quit saying as they do now: "Why I never 
fed any alfalfa, and I know nothing about it." I tell them they have never 
died, either, but that is no reason why they never will die. Why should the 
farmer raise timothy to sell to such fellows, incurring great loss of fertility, 
simply because a city horse owner "knows nothing about alfalfa," and doesn't 
want to learn? Uncle Sam says: "Instances are on record where horses have 
done heavy work year in and year out, fed on alfalfa alone, without any grain 
whatever." And he also says, "Alfalfa hay, in feeding value, is worth $10.76 
a ton more than timothy." I have read somewhere, "If everything but 
alfalfa was wiped off the face of the earth, the human race could exist," and 
some one has said, "The Almighty may be able to make a better plant than 
alfalfa, but he never has." "Cookies" are made of alfalfa and eighty-seven 
kinds of candies are made of it, while men smoke it and chew it, and "girls 



SUCCESS WITH ALFALFA .21 

eat alfalfa to make them pretty (but some don't need it, you know)." I be- 
lieve in feeding a little corn to balance the alfalfa, and I believe in raising 
that corn on alfalfa sod. Try it for 100 bushels per acre. 

Let us raise alfalfa and live stock to feed the old hungry earth, so we 
can feed the hungry millions that we hope in the future will do as they 
would like to be done by, individually and nationally. This will "do away 
with war, forever." We will certainly then need alfalfa to support the 
teeming millions, and for this our acres must be made more fertile, for they 
are not likely to increase in number, as population increases, and is not held 
in check by old Mars, or the Kaiser. Let us fertilize the earth with alfalfa 
that inhales the nitrogen of the air and pumps up fertility from down towards 
China. Coburn says: "In a certain porous soil in Arizona (I believe it 
is) alfalfa roots were found 129 feet deep. They were mining that deep 
under an alfalfa field (he says) and the roots of alfalfa were sticking down 
through the roof of the mine." The word "alfalfa" means, in Arabic, "the 
best fodder," and the Arabs have the finest horses in the world. Don't think 
alfalfa is a slow growing weakling. I have cut alfalfa for hay in just sixty 
days from May seeding and I always cut it three times the first year. I have 
sown alfalfa in January, before zero weather, and it grew waist high the 
first season. Fig. 32. The large plant is of this seeding. 

Note: — August 9, 1919 — I have now cut my last March seeded alfalfa 
twice, June 18 and July 23, respectively. I have also cultivated it both ways 
severely with my Massey cultivator and this did not plow it out. It was 
knee high at the first cutting, but only six inches high at the second cutting, 
on account of severe drouth and a disease called "yellows." 

As to alfalfa being a "delicate plant," I think not. It is small at first, 
of course, but I never knew anything that was full grown at birth, did you? 
Give alfalfa room, inoculation, lime and a little time, and don't cut its 
head off, and its lungs out, and it will take care of itself, yourself, your land, 
your live stock and the mortgage on your farm. 

Thin Alfalfa Makes the Most Hay 

A few years ago a neighbor wanted to rent ten acres of my alfalfa to 
put in corn, as he said: "The alfalfa is too thin to amount to anything." 
I told him that the thinnest alfalfa always makes the most hay. "Well," said 
he, "that piece ought to make a lot of hay, then," and it did, and it still makes 
fine crops of hay. 

In 1917 a man said to me: "You have just about a fourth cf a stand 
on that 16-acre alfalfa field," but the same year he paid me $12.50 an acre 
for one crop, standing in that same field. It made about two tons per acre 
of fine hay at this (the third) cutting. After this it sesmed strange to me 
that this same man would reseed with oats and alfalfa about thirty acres 
of alfalfa that I had sown five years before, on his farm, which I had leased 
for that long a time, and the lease had expired. This man used a three- 
horse cultivator in this already too thick alfalfa, followed it up with a two- 
horse grain drill, seeding oats, and this was followed closely by a two-horse 
alfalfa seeder, putting some 8 or 10 pounds of alfalfa seed per acre in this 
field, that had often made for me two tons or more of alfalfa hay per acre, at 
one cutting! I told him the old plants would kill out his new seeding, but 
he said he "wanted a stand." You can imagine the results — lost seed and 
lost work, of course; as all the young alfalfa plants were shaded and killed 
by the old. When I bunch (or shock) alfalfa, I try to keep the top. or 



22 SUCCESS WITH ALFALFA 



bleached, side out, to retain the green color of hay under it. I lift the forkfuls, 
placing one layer on top of another, without turning it over. 

Hoping this little book will brighten up the life of some discouraged, 
poor farmer, by greening up his bare, impoverished fields, and changing him 
from a grain seller to a livestock raiser, and trusting that some rich farmer 
who has no faith in this "Jack Frost" or "sun-cracked" method, will at least 
"try a patch this way," and follow directions, I await the consequences, 
and will say good bye for the "circus," offering to answer each alfalfa ques- 
tion for one dime, and return postage; but will suggest that you try thinking 
the matter out for yourself and keep the dime. Sow more acres of alfalfa 
with less seed and with 95 per cent, less work. "Let the weeds alone until 
the harvest," mow closely and be successful with alfalfa. Sow a field every 
year or two. Plow some for corn in four or five years, if bluegrass creeps 
in, and raise 100 bushels of corn per acre. 

N. B.— Never cut a healthy alfalfa crop until "new lungs" are started; 
then cut close and end your weed troubles ; but should alfalfa turn yellow from 
any cause cut it at once, lungs or no lungs. I never have alfalfa bloat, but I 
never turn "hungry" stock onto alfalfa. I turn on at night when they have full 
stomachs and they don't eat too much alfalfa. Should I take stock off alfalfa, 
for any cause, I fill them up again with blue grass, dry hay or something before 
turning on again, and I never have had a case of bloat on alfalfa; but I 
have had to "stick" cattle bloated on red clover to save their lives. Through 
with the circus? Then come into the "Side Show." It's fine. 

ADDENDUM OR "SIDE SHOW," ETC. 

It was intended to make this treatise brief and to the point so it Avould be 
read, but I often get letters like this: 

"Mr. J. N. Shirley, 
Dear Sir: — 

I see in the farm papers that you say you sow alfalfa in corn stubbles, oats 
stubbles, potato or tomato ground, etc., in winter. Will you please tell me how 
you prepare the ground? Do you plow or disc it?" 

Such letters show that I am not understood sometimes, and I fear farmers 
sometimes read without digesting what they read. "As a man thinketh, so 
is he," and I hope the farmers will read and think out the details that are "too 
numerous" to put into print. The writer can only give the "skeleton" for the 
thoughtful reader to develop or "feed out." Right here I wish to have you 
look at No. 6, showing alfalfa seeding on Washington's birthday. This ought 
to make it plain, when I state that "I let the 'corn stubs' stand until I mow 
them with the first crop of hay." To meet many such queries as this I have 
concluded to add some old articles of mine that have been "accumulating" for 
some time; and if you find repetitions don't be alarmed, for, I assure you, they 
are unintentional (or otherwise). Will also, for variety, give a few com- 
ments, both friendly and otherwise, so bear with me, or not read them at all, 
but first take a little rest and a look at a young Hereford cowboy (Figure 23), 
on "Alfalfa White Face Farm," Boone County, Indiana, where I raised my 
first fifty-eight acres of alfalfa! The "Cowboy," our son, is Master Maurice 
Barnes Shirley on his fine Shetland pony, which he soon outgrew, as you will 
see later on in Figure 16. You might be interested also by taking a peep at 
some buildings and live stock on "Crystal Spring Alfalfa Farm," in Monroe 
County, Indiana, in which this boy has an interest and where they claim 
"alfalfa won't grow." See Figures 22 and 24. 



SUCCESS WITH ALFALFA 



23 




Fig. 23 — Hereford "Cowboy," on Alfalfa White Face Farm, 
owned by J. N. Shirley, in 1904, 

ALFALFA AS EASILY RAISED AS DANDELIONS 

Did you ever know a dandelion crop to fail? I never did. It did not 
fail this spring, even when we had very little snow last winter to protect the 
tiny dandelion seeds that nature sows just like she does morning glories, wild 
lettuce, thistles, rag weeds, bluegrass, buck horn, jimson, cockle burrs, Spanish 
needles, mustard, and a great deal of other "so forth," all of which never fail 
to produce satisfactory crops to the farmer who is "afraid" to trust Dame 
Nature to sow alfalfa for him, yet he does entrust her with $30-a-bushel clover- 
vseed, while alfalfa that costs now only about half that much is held back from 
February seeding until two or three months' work is done trying to undo what 
nature has done all winter in making a seed bed for alfalfa. 

If tiny seeds like the above, and even tobacco seeds and Alsyke clover 
seeds and timothy seeds will grow a la Jack Frost, why not alfalfa too? If 
any advocate of the regulation or the "according to Hoyle" method will tell 
me ivhy, I will be grateful to him indeed. I have alfalfa (at this writing, May 
21, 1919) six to eight inches high that was sown in March last, and the plants 
have roots anchored that deep in solid ground, and these roots don't run 
"afoul" of air holes, or piles of corn stalks, or other rubbish "turned under" by 
plowing the ground. I know man is prone to plow, whether there is any sense 
in it or not. What is the need of all this "turning under" and then the result- 
ing harrowing, dragging and rolling to pulverize and pack the soil again to 
make it solid like it was before it was plowed? They say "turn under" the 
weeds, rubbish, etc., to rot. Won't they rot on top of the ground? Are they 
not useful as a mulch and manure on top of the ground? Why not let them 
leach down to the roots instead of leaclyng down from the roots? I often use 
a disc or a "Massey-Harris" to break ground for corn. Mr. E. P. McCaslin, 
of Irvington, Indianapolis, has a plow especially made to break sod ground, 
only about one»and a half inches deep for corn, and he cultivates all his crops 
only about one-half inch deep, and raises good crops, too. I know this, for I 
have seen them, and I have seen fine corn grown by this man without any cul- 
tivation at all. He simply had some old carpet pegged down to the ground 
around the roots of cornstalks that had well developed ears of coin 
on them. I talked with one of this man's neighbors not long ago, on a street 
car, and I asked him what he thought of Mr. McCaslin's methods. His reply 
was: "He didn't beat me very much last year." If he only equalled him in 
yield he certainly beat him, for he did much less hard labor than this neigh- 
bor did to produce equal results. I will admit that this man got more good 
exercise than Mr. McCaslin did, and exercise is worth something, of course; 
a.nd it is in good demand in the iegulation-cultivation-all-summei-sow-it-just- 



24 



SUCCESS WITH ALFALFA 



before-a-drought-comes plan, in preparing- a seed bed for alfalfa. If you write 
Mr. McCaslin don't forget to enclose a few "extra stamps" to pay for reply, 
and he will help you. 

I know, also, that my alfalfa, at this writing, has a splendid chance to 
withstand summer's drought and winter's blasts better than what you are 
going to sow in July or August, after doing ten or twelve weeks hard work that 
I don't do (I being so situated that I can do without the exercise). "It makes 
me tired" to hear men say every day that their "land is not adapted to alfalfa." 
They talk as if their land had no water under it nor air above it. I think 
they surely are mistaken, and air and water and "solid" earth are all that ai*e 
needed to raise some alfalfa at least. All three of these requirements are at 
hand in the winter time, and fewer weeds are grown, too, in the winter than in 
the summer. 

But what is the use to write all this? It has little or no effect. Man 
wants to 

"Plow deep while sluggards sleep 
And have corn to sell and corn to keep." 

But he don't have it by a long shot by this method. He sometimes has it 
in spite of this method. Did you ever examine the roots of a two-inch high 
potato plant? If you did it carefully you found thread-like roots (on this two- 
inch plant) at least four inches long and only about one-half inch under the 
surface of the ground. Why plow or hoe deep and cut the roots off "to loosen 
up the ground to let the roots through?" Can the roots "go through" when 
you keep them cut off each week? They don't grow through the loose ground, 
anyway. They must cling to and penetrate the solid ground, much like the 
climbing vine clings to the solid wall. Mr. McCaslin's "scraping" of the soil 
kills the weeds, conserves the moisture, doesn't disturb the plant roots, produces 
equally as good, and often better results than his neighbors' deep methods, and 
the only loss that I see that he suffers is the lack of exercise that the deep cul- 
tivator gets. No plant or tree will grow until the earth is well settled on its 
roots. Why disturb these roots or cut them off? 




Fig. 29— Mr. McCaslin and 
his attachment for 
Wheel Hoe-Shal- 
low Cultivator. 




Fig-. 30 — Cultivating March, 1019, Seeded Al- 
falfa in July, 191.9. 



THIN ALFALFA. 
I have stated before in this book that Uncle Sam says: "Counts in old 
alfalfa fields show stands of from one to six plants to the square foot, with 
equal yields from all." He also says: "Twenty pounds of alfalfa seed per 



SUCCESS WITH ALFALFA 



25 




Fig\ 3 — Cutting- fourth crop alfalfa on Nov. 6, 191< 
Seeding' done in March, 1913, 




FifiT.S — Last three of ten Alfalfa Ricks, season of 1918. 




Fig.. 17— Cutting first crop. Alfalfa and weeds 
(mostly weeds 1 , summer of 1918. 
Seeding done -in February 1918; 



Fig. Y8 Cutting second crop Alfalfa, sarin 

Fig - . IT, free from weeds, summer ot 
r.'iN 



26 SUCCESS WITH ALFALFA 

acre puts one hundred seeds to the square foot," and he recommends that 
twenty pounds of alfalfa be sown per acre, but he doesn't tell why. I "differ 
with Uncle Sam." I sow about four pounds of alfalfa seed per acre. I differ 
with Mr. "Hoyle," too. I don't do special cultivation for alfalfa and lose one 
year's use of land. I do my work the year before, in some other crop, and 
then let Jack Frost finish the seed bed and cover the seeds. I cut three crops 
the first year, but, of course, I lose the "exercise" of preparing the seed bed 
for alfalfa that the "other fellow" gets and is welcome to. 

Recently I received a letter from Mr. Ward 0. Ostrander, of Purdue Uni- 
versity, which I will reproduce here. I am glad to get this letter and I have 
promised Mr. Ostrander all the "alfalfa sod" he needs. In his reply he 
says he means to see me soon and he "intends to use me." All right. (I like 
"to be useful as well as ornamental.") Many years ago I furnished Pro- 
fessor Wiancko an alfalfa plant to exhibit at Indiana State Fair, but he 
hesitated to use it as he said "Farmers would not sow alfalfa because they 
could not plow up such alfalfa roots." Professor Van Dorman told him to 
use the plant, for farmers wanted to know whether it was a bad thing or a 
good thing to have. I dug that plant out of blue grass sod and left blue 
grass in the crown of it. It was the largest plant exhibited at this fair. 



MR. OSTRANDER'S LETTER 

.Purdue University, Lafayette, Ind., May 16, 1919. 
Mr. J. N. Shirley, 
116 South Emerson Ave., 
Indianapolis, Ind. 
Dear Mr. Shirley: — 

We would like to be able to obtain some alfalfa sod for our exhibit this 
fall at the State Fair. Professor Wiancko recommended my writing to you 
regarding it as he said you knew more about alfalfa in that section than any- 
body else. I have had it on my mind to ti*y to get to see you for the last 
three months some time when I have been in Indianapolis, but so far have not 
been able to do so. I shall appreciate your opinion regarding the above. 
Hoping to see you before a great while, I am 

Very truly yours, 

WARD 0. OSTRANDER, 
Associate in Soils and Crops Extension. 

Replying to this letter I said: "I thank Professor Wiancko for the 'com- 
pliment,' but I fear it doesn't amount to much, as about all 'people seem to 
know' about alfalfa in this section is that it is too thin, no matter if it makes 
five or six tons of $30 hay a year, per acre, 'it is too thin.' " What's the 
difference how thin it is if it yields that way? 



A FEW THINGS OF VITAL IMPORTANCE 

"Solid Seed Bed" 

It is an universally conceded point that a solid seed bed is essential for 
alfalfa. I claim we have it in corn stubble, oats stubble, potato or tomato 
ground, bean ground, etc. In fact, we have it in any ground that was culti- 
vated shallowly the preceding year and then worked on diligently by Jack 
Frost through the winter. He even continues the preparation of this seed 



SUCCESS WITH ALFALFA 



27 



bed after the seed is sown, and we often hear this remark: "Nature pre- 
pares her seed bed by alternate freezing and thawing." Some think corn 
ground should be leveled before sowing alfalfa. This can be done by culti- 
vating after the alfalfa is one year old, when level shallow cultivation was 
not practiced in the previous crops, or by disking in the fall. 

In this book I am showing several crops sown on this natural seed bed, in 
different locations, and at different times, from January to April. In the 
latter month the seeding was done on sun-cracked or wind-"checked" ground, 
of course, but with splendid results, both with weeds and alfalfa. (See Figures 
2, 3, 4, 5 and 6.) 

Plowing makes "air pockets" in the seed bed and it is almost impossible 
to destroy all these "pockets," and the tap root of alfalfa strikes an air 
pocket with the same effect as a nail strikes an auger hole. 




Is it any wonder that alfalfa 
plants have to fight for room to 
exist, if a youngster like this pro- 
duces stems enough to whisker a 
Bolsheviki? Doesn't it seem that a 
lot of alfalfa seed is wasted in 
putting 100 seeds to the square 
foot by using 20 pounds of seeds to 
the acre? Isn't it better to have 
fewer and more vigorous plants at 
less cost than to have this alfalfa 
suicide? 



Fig. 1— A 



'Youthful" Alfalfa plant of .some 
twelve or fifteen years. 



Thick Alfalfa 

It is claimed that we should have thick alfalfa. I agree to this, but it 
must be thick at the top of the plants from tillering rather than at the ground 
from thick seeding. For several years I have claimed one good plant to the 
square foot of surface is about right, and will make more hay than forty 
plants to the square foot will make. Please look at Figure No. 1 showing 
a "youthful" alfalfa plant, of some fifteen or twenty years, perhaps, and still 
"tillering" despite the fact that it contained about four hundred stems from 
the one seed. What would it be at "middle age," say ninety-five or one hun- 
dred years? (Coburn says: "Alfalfa has been known to live over two hun- 
dred years from one seeding," but I never knew it to live that long; yet I do 
not doubt it.) Compare Figure No. 1 with No. 14 and see how the "youth" 
has grown from a two months old "baby" plant. 

Some say "sow alfalfa thick to have fine stemmed hay." Can't we get fine 
stems by this "tillering" process? Uncle Sam, as before stated in the Circus, 
says: "Counts in old alfalfa fields show stands of from one to six plants to 



28 



SUCCESS WITH ALFALFA 



the square foot, with equal yields from all." If one plant to six plants, per 
square foot, yields as much as more plants, or if not more than six plants will 
grow on a square foot, what is the use to sow twenty pounds of seed per acre, 
putting (according to this same Uncle Sam) one hundred seeds to the square 
foot? Alfalfa should be very little thicker than drilled corn, and if it should 
have the cultivation that corn demands, I suppose alfalfa would require mere 
room than corn does. Last year I sowed less than four pounds of alfalfa seed 
per acre in February and March, and got a splendid stand of healthy, vigorous 
plants, and they remain vigorous, where I sowed with corn stubbles only for a 
"nurse crop." Next to corn stubbles or tomato vines, I prefer "weeds as a 
nurse crop for alfalfa," and I would rather sow alfalfa thin and let it tiller 
out than sow it thick and have it "peter out." Thick seeding is a waste of 
seed in any crop, and especially so with alfalfa or clover. There must be 
breathing places for everything. Even in cities, parks are needed for this 
breathing, and the farmer needs air in his alfalfa field as well as in his house — 
not all "hot air," either. 




Fig. 6 — Seeding' Alfalfa on Washington's Birthday, with a 
"Two-Fan Seeder" 



Early Seeding 

"The early bird gets the worm," and the early sown alfalfa gets the rain 
and gentle sunshine to give it a good send-off before the hot droughts of sum- 
mer, and winter sown alfalfa is "scarified" by frost and thawing, and it has 
a good root growth to withstand the rigors of the first winter, while your 
August' or September seeded alfalfa is often spewed out of the ground by the 
same Jack Frost that would be cultivating one year old alfalfa plants that he 
would have been the "foster father" of had the farmer simply broadcasted the 
seeds on his "honey-combed" work the winter before. Now look at Figure No. 
6, "Seeding Alfalfa on Washington's Birthday," and compare expenses and re- 
sults with the costly work of a two-horse alfalfa drill used on a more costly pre- 
pared seedbed. Which method appeals to you for speed, ease of operation and 
utilization of early rainfall and gentle sunshine? 



SUCCESS WITH ALFALFA 29 

Inoculation is easy. Just throw inoculated dirt up in the air, somewhat 
like a mad bull does, and let it blow over the field. I wait till alfalfa is six 
or eight inches high and shades the ground some before I scatter the soil that 
I get from an old alfalfa field. 

High Clipping — Never do it unless you kill weeds in your cornfield or 
garden that same way. High clipping only makes the weeds branch out more 
and cuts the lungs off your slender alfalfa plants. 

Close Cutting of Alfalfa and Weeds — This is always in order when the 
new "lungs" or new sprouts at base (for the next crop), are about one inch 
long and ready to burst into foliage, to give breath of life to your alfalfa, and 
to occupy the ground before other weed seeds can germinate to take the place 
of the weeds you killed by the close cutting under the branches and buds of 
weeds, instead of "clipping high" and making the weeds thicker. The "high 
clipping" beheads the young alfalfa stems, causing them to die down to the 
ground among the thickened weeds, and unless the new "lungs" or new sprouts 
are in evidence, you have the sad spectacle of alfalfa with its "lungs cut out" 
and further smothered by the thickened, bunchy weeds! No wonder high- 
clipped alfalfa dies! Try it as I have done (to my sorrow), if you don't 
believe this. Suppose you had a weedy bed of slender cabbage plants. Would 
you clip the tops of your cabbage plants to kill the weeds and to make your 
plants stocky? 



Opposition to Alfalfa 

It seems strange that so many are indifferent or are really hostile to 
alfalfa and to nature's methods of seeding it. But such is always the case with 
any good thing. The old lady stood around, you know, and said they would 
never start the first steam car. When finally it did start, she said : "They'll 
never stop it; they'll never stop it!" Twenty years ago I wrote to Purdue 
University, giving my experience with alfalfa and Professor Latta answered: 
"The soil around LaFayette doesn't seem to be adapted to alfalfa, etc.," but in , 
a few years he said : "Alfalfa has been known to go through hardpan." A few 
years ago I showed Professor Latta some winter seeded alfalfa plants at the 
Indiana State Fair, and he said: "Wonderful," but that was all he said. 

Years ago, when I used to sow alfalfa "according to Hoyle," I used to be, 
occasionally, called upon to attend Farmers' Institutes, and at one of these, at 
Frankfort, Indiana, I made a statement in my embarrassing beginning, that I 
still stick to. I had taken a wisp of alfalfa with me, and on the table beside 
this were a few ears of corn. Picking up some hay and an ear of coin, I said : 
"Here we have the greatest feed combination known," and I still believe it — 
alfalfa and a little corn. Uncle Sam says: "Alfalfa hay is worth $10.75 a 
ton more than timothy hay," and it is equal, he says, to shelled corn. You 
know Purdue says: "Alfalfa is equal to wheat bran, pound per pound." The 
North Dakota experiment station says: "Two tons of alfalfa hay equal 110 
bushels oats." See Figures Nos. 7 and 8 for what Kansas and Illinois agri- 
cultural experiment stations think of corn and alfalfa; or, better, try it and see 
what one or two ears of corn and alfalfa will do for a hog or a horse. 

We know alfalfa improves the soil and produces $100 worth of crops per 
acre in one year, and it doesn't have to be sown but once in a lifetime or two, if 
properly cared for. We know that should rain, hail, frost, hot winds, etc., 
destroy a crop of almost any other thing, that that thing is "done for," for 
that year, at least, but alfalfa comes up, with another crop, in about thirty 



30 



SUCCESS WITH ALFALFA 



days; yet farmers don't raise alfalfa except in small patches and "far be- 
tween." I used to say: "In about 150 years farmers will be raising alfalfa 
and city horse owners will be feeding it, all right; but I am about to believe 
I am "too previous" in this, for history says: "When Xerxes invaded Greece, 
490 years before Christ, they had alfalfa hay for their horses," and still it iy 
not generally raised, despite the fact that we know the meaning of the word 
"alfalfa" in Arabic, is "best fodder," and the Arabs are known to have the best 
horses in the world. It seems possible that Christ may come again before 
alfalfa is universally used in the United States, unless fewer than 100 seeds to 
the square foot are sown in the meantime. 



The Seed Bed— Deep Plowing 

"It is natural for man to indulge in the illusions of plowing. We are apt 
to shut our eyes against a painful "Jack Frost" and listen to the sOngs of that 
plowing until she transforms us into fogies. Is this the part of wise mert 
engaged in the great and arduous struggle from soil poverty? Forbid it — 
"Almighty Horse Sense." "I am willing to know the truth about alfalfa, the; 
whole truth, and to provide for it; and to let Jack Frost do the work for me 
when he wants to do it." Why destroy nature's best early seed bed to make 
a worse one later? I have been called an "alfalfa crank," "alfalfa king," 
"alfalfa enthusiast," "rag-weed king," "alfalfa heretic," but yesterday I was 
called "the father of alfalfa." "Oh, no," I replied, "alfalfa was known over 
400 years before Christ, and I am not old enough to be the father of alfalfa.'" 
I have been attacked by agricultural experiment stations and by county agents, 
but I don't care. I tell them "no kite can fly without an opposing wind," and, 
if after I am dead, it dawns upon the United States that I was of benefit as ail 
"alfalfafst," I would rather have this to maintain my memory than have a 
duplicate of the Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument of our Hoosier state. I only 
ask that you try this method, even if you do sneer at it at first. 




9 —~ -, 



Fig. 15 — Mr. and Mrs. J. N. Shirley, In- 
dianapolis (Photo. 1918). 



Fig. 16 — Maurice B. Shirley, of Gary 
Schools. Gary, Ind. (1918;. 



But this "Side Show" is getting to be almost the "principal thing," 
and too much hash is accumulating, so I guess I will introduce Mrs. Shirley 
(with whom I am pretty well acquainted), Figure 15, and I can testify to her 
£ood cooking, although she says I often say nothing about it, yet I tell her, 



SUCCESS WITH ALFALFA 31 

"Actions speak louder than words," and she knows her cookies disappear when 
I am around. I must tell a good joke or two on her and our son, Maurice B. 
(and here he is, too), Figure 16. They made fun of me for a few years for 
"not eating breakfast," but finally they got at it themselves and I have often 
known my wife to do her washing before breakfast on Monday mornings. She 
does better now; she lets the laundry do it before she eats her breakfast. Mrs. 
Shirley is a good cheese maker, too, as well as a good ccok. Once she said she 
had nine customers waiting for their turn to get her cottage cheese, and I told 
her she would have to "cheese it" or enlarge the capacity of her cheese factory. 
For several years she has had an easy way of churning a pound of butter from 
three pints of cream in five or six minutes. Also, my wife ("she") puts up 
our pork so it will keep a year, and it seems to taste better all the time. Some- 
times she wraps it up in paper and sews it up in canvas sacks, but oftener "she" 
slices it and fries it, putting it in small buckets or stone jars, covering it with 
hot lard, etc. The day after Christmas, 1918, 1 got up early (or my wife "she" 
got me up early) in the morning. I took the street car to the Union station 
(five miles away), took the 6:40 steam train to the station near our Monroe 
Couny farm, 49 jmles away, walked about three miles, and employed a neighbor 
to help me kill and dress two 200-pound "alfalfa" Duroc hogs. Wrapping them 
in gunny sacks, we took them to the station, and billed them out by express on 
the same train I came home on. I arrived at Union station at 8:45 p. m. the 
same day. The porkers came to our house in good shape the next morning and 
my wife, "she" had me slice hog 'till I got tired. Part (the hams) she smoked, 
sliced and put down, even without frying, and I have been wondering why 
farmers can not "pack pork" this way and sell it to their city friends and make 
money, rather than have the millionaire packers do this work for them. It 
seems to me this might be practiced, to some extent at least, and save "holding 
hogs over" at the stockyards or shipping them back and unloading them, with 
all the attendant loss that occurred last winter, which will not soon be for- 
gotten. Uncle Sam is willing "to deliver the goods" over land or through the 
air. Why not let him do it? 

This may be a little off the subject, but I am talking about alfalfa hogs 
(see Figure No. 21), and I refer you to cut No. 7 showing an alfalfa, hay and 
corn-fed hog, weighing 250 pounds, and a hog from the same litter, fed on 
corn alone, that weighed but sixty pounds. — Courtesy of Jewell Mayes, Sec- 
retary, Missouri State Board of Agriculture, Jefferson City, Mo. 

If you want any "expert" information on cottage cheese, butter making or 
good home pork packing, "cookies," etc., send a few stamps to my wife, "she," 
and I think you will hear from her, but "she" doesn't know I am even writing 
this book, and I may "get into it." Will say that our son, Maurice B., used to 
be a student at Purdue and I supplied him with a little alfalfa seed to sow on 
"honey-combed" ground along the street "somewhere near the University build- 
ings," but I never heard how it "came out." Later, I also asked Professor 
Wiancko (an old friend of mine), how his winter seeding of alfalfa did, and he 
said "it didn't come up good," or something to that effect. Too bad, but I don't 
understand it. Maurice B. is Director of Animal Husbandry of Emerson 
School, Gary, Indiana, and has charge of several hundred boys and girls, and 
many "other animals." Two years ago he sowed a couple of acres of alfalfa 
on the sandy campus of that school, and despite the ball playing, etc., I saw 
some good plants there in December, 1917. He has quite a flock of sheep, some 
Shetland ponies, etc., besides poultry and wild animals in his "zoo," and he 
needs alfalfa, as I suppose nearly every bird, quadruped or "creeping thing" in 
this $1,900 collection (a pet for every boy and girl) will relish alfalfa. 



32 



SUCCESS WITH ALFALFA 



Blue Grass — Last winter I plowed up some six-year-old alfalfa (on account 
of blue grass) and I sent Maurice B. some alfalfa plants, suggesting that he 
plant them in rows and have the boys and girls cultivate them for hay. 
(Buried alfalfa stems turn to rcots and will certainly make thick stands at two 
feet apart each way.) The plants can be dropped in furrows and may be 
covered with a drag or hoe. Drop them on the sides and they will grow if 
covered. 

I must tell another little joke or two on "my wife, she." A few years ago 
I broke our garden with a disc. I went to the house, got a few ears of sweet 



ALFALFA BALANCES 

THE CORN RATION 

SAME LITTER 



CORN 
ALONE 




CORN 

& 

ALFALFA 

HAT 



FRO* KANS EXP. STA. 



Fig. 7— Courtesy, Jewell Mayes, Secy. Mo. State Board of Agriculture, Jefferson City, Mo. 
Two pigs of same litter, put into separate dry lots at weaning- time. Out fed 
corn alone; one, corn and alfalfa hay. 

corn, telling Mrs. S. that I meant to sow the corn and disc it in. "She" took 
the corn out of my hands, saying, "No, sir; you don't soiv any corn in my 
garden." I went back and "monkeyed" around a little with the team, then I 
returned, got the corn, sowed it thinly and disced it in. My wife knew nothing 
about it till the corn was up nicely and then "she" said nothing about it. I 
cultivated it shallowly with a hoe. I could hoe one stalk easier than three or 
four in a hill, and we never had nicer sweet corn in our lives. My wife ("she") 
wssd to say I could talk of nothing but alfalfa or prohibition. She used also 



SUCCESS WITH ALFALFA S3 



to say, "T. B. Terry is your God." "She" used to talk about "com and wheat." 
Of late she has gotten to be about as good an alfalfa "man" as I am, and she 
wants us to raise live stock instead of selling grain and fertility off the farm, 
and I think my wife ("she") is all right, and I always take her advice — if it 
suits me. Sometimes I would do better to take it anyhow. 



"HASH DEPARTMENT"; "ODDS AND ENDS" 

Sloiv to Learn Alfalfa. 

It took me fifteen years to learn (and to practice) what I had known 
nearly all my life. That is, I knew, in reason, that alfalfa would grow by 
.sowing it in early spring on unprepared ground, just like clover grows, but 
"Purdue" said break the ground early for alfalfa and cultivate each week, 
rolling, dragging, etc., to get the ground solid (again) and sow in July or 
August, and I thought for fifteen years it must be done that way, despite the 
fact I had demonstrated the contrary in my very first seeding of alfalfa about 
twenty-three years ago. 

I sowed my first one and one-half acres of alfalfa on the richest black 
land on my one hundred acres of all cultivated Boone County, Indiana farm. 
This spot was "Elm Swamp," well drained land, and I sowed the alfalfa broad- 
cast early in April, where wheat. had winter killed, and covered the seed with 
a one-horse wheat drill. Just to see if alfalfa would grow upon poor land, I 
sprinkled some seed upon the poor white clay knolls (without covering or cul- 
tivating in any way), and it grew nicely. I do not remember whether the 
ground was "sun-cracked," even at the time of sowing, but the alfalfa did 
splendidly and I learned two things from this: That alfalfa will grow on 
poor land, and that it will grow without breaking the ground ; but from, "force 
of habit," I kept on sowing "according to Hoyle," until March 17, 1912, as 
stated elsewhere in this book. I used to send articles to a noted live stock 
journal^ but the editor said that my way of seeding had been threshed out by 
the agricultural experiment stations. I tried it again, but was told: "Our 
readers have had your methods explained frequently, etc." Once, before this, 
I was called down for advocating alfalfa and blue grass on the same ground at 
the same time, etc. By reading Joe Wing's articles, over twenty-five years 
ago, in The Gazette, I became interested in alfalfa, and am still interested in it. 

Excuse me for being personal. It is said we "should not tell tales out of 
school," but I am telling them in school, and I think I shall go on with the 
telling, as it is time something was said to set people to thinking. Purdue says 
in a recent Clover Bulletin that 25% to 35% of the original fertility has leached 
and washed away from our cultivated lands," and something ought to be done 
to replenish these depleted soils. Can this be done any easier or more profit- 
ably than by raising alfalfa and live stock? Purdue and the editor of the 
Indiana Farmers' Guide say: "Sow rape and oats for early hog pasture." 
Why break ground early and prepare it for oats and rape when much earlier 
and better pasture can be obtained by sowing alfalfa seed in corn stubble, oats 
stubble, potato or tomato ground in January, February or March, when the 
ground is "honey-combed" or (neglecting to do it then) the seed may be sown 
on sun-cracked ground in April or early May without any cultivation at all? 
Some say it is risky to sow it this way. How do they know; did they ever 
try it? Did you ever know a crop of dandelion, sweet clover, wild lettuce, or 
any other weed to fail, when sown that way? At this writing, April 23, 1919, 
it looks like we would have a full crop of dandelion this year, and I don't know 



SUCCESS WITH ALFALFA 



of any one who sowed it "according to Hoyle," but I saw a man a few springs 
ago buying some dandelion seed in an Indianapolis seed store. I suppose he 
had no faith in the "Jack Frost" method of seeding and "wanted to be sure 
of a stand." 

Of course "rape and oats are intended for the fellow that doesn't have alfal- 
fa." it is claimed, but why need there be such a fellow? To sow an acre with 
oats and rape seed costs more than the price of four pounds of alfalfa seed. 
Why not sow alfalfa and have permanent and better pasture? 

I have in my possession an old letter from my friend, Mr. Biliter of the 
Farmers' Guide, telling of his return from a western trip several years ago, 
"filled with alfalfa enthusiasm." He says he went to Purdue urging that 
alfalfa be pushed in Indiana, and was told that he would be doing an injury 
to the farmers of Indiana to urge them to raise alfalfa, and I believe this was 
about right, according to the costly "all summer cultivation methods" that' 
were then and are still advocated by most, if not all, agricultural experiment 
stations of the United States, of which I have ever had any knowledge. The 
nearest and only exception to this statement may be found in the fore part of 
this book, where Mr. Jewell Mayes, Secretary Missouri State Board of Agri- 
culture, Jefferson City, Missouri, says: "No matter if people do disagree 
with you, you have, beyond the shadow of a doubt, discovered one of nature's 
problems in the planting of alfalfa. The plants you send are undeniable 
proofs of this fact." Mr. Biliter continues in this letter to tell of his de- 
termination to "urge" the matter of alfalfa culture in his own paper, and he 
did so. I have read much of his writings and I agree with him when he claims 
to be one of the pioneers of alfalfa culture in Indiana, but were I not a Baptist, 
I would almost think that Mr. Biliter has lately fallen from Alfalfa Grace, 
and taken up with rape and oats. 

Mr. Biliter has been promising me for years that he would Visit my alfalfa 
fields, but he has never done so, to my knowledge. Recently a foot note at the 
end of an old-style alfalfa article in the Guide, said: "We know Mr. Shirley 
will not agree with this, but most farmers seem to use this method of raising 
alfalfa." The note seemed to favor the "regulation-cultivation-all-summer-sow- 
it-just-before-a-drought-comes-plan," and did not even suggest that the "Jack 
Frost" plan be tried out. (Editors and farmers must think my methods are 
too ridiculous to try out, or they are loath to lose the "exercise" obtained by 
the old method.) 

Several years ago the Indiana Farmer published one of my articles, and 
a footnote by the editor said: "We suggest that our readers try Mr. Shir- 
ley's winter seeding on a small scale." I replied: "Sow the whole number of 
acres, using only one-third of the twenty pounds of seed per acre, and keep the 
other two-thirds to sow later if winter seeding fails." He did not publish this 
article. 

In 1915 the second Marion County, Indiana, auto-alfalfa excursion visited 
my alfalfa fields. I was showing some March, 1915, seeding at the north end 
of a sixteen-acre field, and one of the men said: "What is this?" I replied, 
"Weeds." "What will you do with them?" he asked. I said: "The Bible 
says : 'Let them alone until the harvest,' " and he said, "Do you try to farm 
according to the Bible?" I replied: "Yes." Today this weedy strip is the 
best in the field and it has been fine all the time since the first cutting in 1915, 
and it was cut three times the first year. You will no doubt remember that 
the summer of 1915 was a very wet one, and Purdue was on the program in 
this auto excursion to visit my fields one day and study the "Shirley Alfalfa 
Method." I showed part of my later sown and thinner-seeded alfalfa, and 



SUCCESS WITH ALFALFA 35 



three or four men finally succeeded in pulling up a rather isolated alfalfa 
plant that had tillered out fine, and had a wonderful amount of "bacteria 
nodules" on its roots, and a photo was taken of it. I remarked: "Thin seed- 
ing gives plants like this." We started on to forty acres more of my alfalfa, 
about two miles away, but were switched off by another man who showed "his" 
alfalfa, twenty-eight acres of which I had sown in partnership with this 
"other man," who claimed that I had only leased it for one year, etc., (which 
was not true, of course, but he was always too busy or too "something" to 
write the article of agreement) . He didn't tell that Shirley sowed twenty- 
eight acres of this alfalfa, and. Shirley didn't tell it either, except privately, 
while waiting in an auto for Mr. "S." to show his young alfalfa, recently 
seeded in rye and oats, etc." 

Well, we finally went on down to the "forty acres" and the professors 
took a ladder and climbed upon a 20-foot by 40-foot half finished rick of alfalfa, 
in the rain. They inspected it and said they thought it "would make good 
manure, etc." I sold this rick, later, for $150 (about one-third of what it 
ought to bring), but the buyer finally said it was so black that it would give 
her cows the foot and mouth disease. She (for it was a woman "dairyman," 
with a dairy of sixty or seventy cows) said it was this black hay that gave 
my stock the foot and mouth disease. I told her certainly she must be mis- 
taken, for the stock was killed by the United States government the fall be- 
fore I had harvested the hay she bought. She only took and paid for a few 
tons of this black hay, despite the fact the cows ate it greedily, and most of 
this large rick did actually "make good manure." I had made the sad mistake 
of making the rick too wide, and as it was put up wet, it got so intensely hot 
that much of it inside burned into charcoal, while the outside was excellent hay 
and relished by horses and cattle, though it was black as tar. 

The auto alfalfa party reported in the Farmers' Guide that "Shirley didn't 
make any new converts, but said *S' was the man." I didn't blame them 
much, as far as the stacking of wet hay was concerned, but I was surprised at 
their approval of Mr. "S's" "oats and rye seeding alfalfa." I thought that 
Purdue ought to know that this would not do, but I have not replied in any 
way until now. I was too busy in alfalfa at the time and I thought I would 
await results anyway. 

Mr. "S." has plowed up most of his alfalfa and reseeded it a time or two. 
He plowed up all of his alfalfa where he had the "oats and rye" and he 
pastured the twenty-eight acres that I had sown "for him?" He pastured it 
all winter and killed it, of course, and planted corn, followed it with wheat, 
rye, etc. This is the man spoken of before in this book, who, at the close of 
my five-year lease on his farm, sowed oats and alfalfa seed in some thirty 
acres of very heavy alfalfa, saying, when I told him he was wasting his time, 
work and seed, that he "wanted a stand," and he is the same man who said I 
had just about a one-fourth stand of alfalfa on a sixteen-acre field; yet he 
paid me $12.50 an acre for one cutting of this field, in 1917 ; he doing the har- 
vesting, and the alfalfa is over a foot high in this field today, April 23, 1919, 
after being cut on the 12th of November, 1918, except about six acres that, on 
account of blue grass, is plowed and partly prepared for corn, but this part 
is looking quite green from the turned-under alfalfa, growing just the same. 
Later, May 16, 1919, from a train window, this week, I notice that Mr. "S." 
has "turned under" the above mentioned "very heavy" alfalfa, but he still has 
a good prospect for "alfalfa hay" if he doesn't cultivate it in corn. 



<- SUCCESS WITH ALFALFA __^ 

Black Alfalfa Hay 

I must tell you why I stacked alfalfa in the rain in 1915. I did it be- 
cause it rained nearly all the time, and 1 had to get the hay off so I could cut 
another crop, and I believed the hay would make "good feed," even if it was 
black, and 1 am still of that opinion, had I not made my ricks so wide that they 
got so extremely hot inside as to bum into "charcoal." There was no mold; 
the intense heat "killed the mold germ." The year before (or in 1914) I had 
a medium sized alfalfa rick about one-half done when a very hard rain came. 
I put; a large canvas over the rick, but in this canvas was a hole, some twenty 
inches square. This hole I carefully covered with sheet iron which was blown 
off after we went home, and the hay was so wet I supposed it was ruined. I 
used this as a '.'foundation," however, and that hayrick smoked for several 
weeks, and the hay was as black as tar, but not moldy. I sold the rick to the 
Indianapolis Water Company for $20 a ton, telling them there were about nine 
tons of hay in the rick. We delivered twelve tons and still we had a load left. 
I sent this load to a dairyman, who at once telephoned, asking if I had any 
more of that dark hay. I replied "No," and he said: "My cows are crazy 
for it." So I thought I could have some more of this black hay, that summer 
of 1915, but I made the ricks too large, or too wide, and had "charcoal," which, 
no doubt, would have been all right for my hogs, had I not been "called upon" 
by the foot and mouth disease and had thirty-eight head of stock slaughtered, 
including eight fine brood sows and an excellent cow. I told Purdue that I 
would much rather handle lighter, dry hay, but under the conditions, it was 
stack wet hay or let it lie on the ground to be raked up in the next crop (which 
would have been better this very wet year of 1915). 



Feeds Alfalfa and No Grain 

That year, 1915, I fed no grain at all to my work horses and Professor 
Fisher said they were, "in good working condition." That was what I wanted 
but I think less hay fed and two or three ears of corn would be better and 
about as cheap, when hay is $30 a ton. Right here I wish to say, I am con- 
fident it is poor policy to feed all the alfalfa a horse will eat. He likes it so 
well he will eat too much of it. Limit his hay just as you do his grain. No 
good horseman would give his horse all the corn he will eat; yet the manger is 
stuffed full of alfalfa hay, which is said to be equal to wheat bran, pound for 
pound, in feeding value, and one acre of alfalfa hay in digestible nutrients, 
according to an Illinois bulletin, far exceeds an acre of shelled corn, and is 
more than three times the feeding value of an acre of timothy. (See Figure 
No. 8.) A horse (or man) should not be gorged on anything and certainly not 
on anything as nutritious as alfalfa hay. 

Corn is a contrast to alfalfa and no doubt the best grain to feed with it. 
Oats and bran are much like alfalfa and do not balance the ration. For a 
good sandwich we don't like a slice of bread between two other slices of 
bread, but we prefer a slice of meat, if you please. For a good plant to secure 
this meat, see Figure 7. Alfalfa balances the corn and alfalfa makes poor 
land produce the corn. 



SUCCESS WITH ALFALFA 



Zl 



DIGESTIBLE NUTRIENTS 
ON ONE ACRE. 



4000 lbs. 



Corn 



^flal 



3500 



12 T. 



Alfalfa 



4T. 
80001b. 

53% 



3000 



Shelled 



2500 



2400011142401b 
16* 

3840lb| 



2000 



"Clover 



1500 



60 Bu. 
33601b. 

80 o/ o 
26881b. 



Timothv 



1000 



500 



2 T. 

|4000Ib. 
1.5 T. I a a c/ 
3000lbL *~/°. 

■A d~» 0/ " 



13801b. 



JL 



Fig. 8 — Digestible Nutrients on One Acre. 
-Courtesy Jewell Mayes, Secretary, Missouri State W^-.wrt of Agriculture. 



That "Black Hay Again" 

I sent a sample of that black hay to Purdue and asked for an analysis. 
The reply was: "If stock relish the hay it is palatable to them, and there- 
fore good feed, and no analysis is needed." I then took a bunch of it to Dr. 
H. E. Barnard, of the Pure Food Department at the Indiana State House. 1 
introduced myself and he asked if I were "J. N. Shirley of Marion County." 
I said, "Yes," and he replied, "I know all about you." "Well," I said, "I never 
saw you before." He replied: "I read all that stuff you write." I told him 
I had lots of opposition. He said: "That doesn't make any difference. I, my- 
self, have that all the time." Well, Dr. Barnard began eating my "black hay" 
and said: "I think it's good feed," but don't you think I had trouble to sell 
that "black hay," no matter how well the stock ate it? Had I owned the stock 
mysslf I would certainly have fed it to them. That is the best thing to do 
with alfalfa hay, and I would feed it all if I were not located in the city, where 
it is impossible to keep so much" stock, but we have a few brood sows on the. 
Monroe County farm, and or. the 14th of April I took a snapshot at forty-five 



38 SUCCESS WITH ALFALFA 

pigs that are running on alfalfa, and whose dams had alfalfa hay to eat last 
winter. There is one "youngster" in the bunch that doesn't belong to me, but I 
wish she did. (See Figure No. 24.) 

Don't understand that I advocate stacking heavy, wet alfalfa. It is cheaper 
to have "pea green" hay, if you have ideal weather, but I had such splendid 
black hay in 1914 that I meant to "turn the hose" on a rick the next year, if 
necessary, to try it again, but it wasn't necessary. Handling heavy, wet 
alfalfa, I imagine, is about like filling a silo with green corn. I never tried 
the latter, however, but alfalfa is good enough for me, and, in fact, my "black 
hay" was really fine silage, I believe, and I needed no silo for it, either. Silage 
is good feed, but expensive when compared with alfalfa, to say nothing of 
the different effect it has on the soil. I tried shredding corn, too, twice and 
swore off both times. Once I bought a silo that had some silage in it that I 
fed with splendid results, but I sold the silo after hauling it to my farm. I 
did not erect it at all. Alfalfa is good enough for me, for the land and for 
the stock and Jack Frost is good enough to raise it for me, so I "let good 
enough and cheap enough alone." 

The United States Department of Agriculture in a recent valuable 
Farmers' Bulletin says: "While putting up the first cutting of alfalfa the 
corn cultivator often must stand idle in the field." What of it? Alfalfa is 
worth more than corn. Why not reduce the corn acreage a little or use a 
weeder to prevent weeds by going over a 20-acre field of corn in one day with 
one horse? I would rather raise 100 bushels of corn per. acre, occasionally, on 
alfalfa sod, than 14 bushels each year, on timothy sod (especially if I had 
alfalfa in the meantime) , constantly making my land richer instead of poorer. 
It seems strange that farmers dote so much on their "rotation," why not raise 
more live stock and let the live stock harvest the crops instead of paying high 
priced, inefficient labor to do it? I read recently about a man that used a 
scythe, and had a certain peg to hang it on each year. His son grew up "in 
his footsteps" and the two still used the scythe. A neighbor urged them to 
get a horse mowing machine, and the old farmer said "Yes, that would be all 
right, but the gol durn thing would ruin our routine." Let the routine go if 
you can raise live stock almost exclusively on alfalfa, and you can, for alfalfa 
is an almost balanced ration. Sell alfalfa or live stock and buy the little corn 
in part needed of the other fellow that hates to let his cultivator rust a little. 
Yours need not ever rust much if oiled and left idle in the shed, "instead of in 
the field." But I don't want to find fault with everybody, and no doubt many 
are wondering why I am not rich myself from raising so much alfalfa. One 
reason is that I have spent so much time writing and urging the farmers, not 
only of Indiana, but of the whole United States, to raise alfalfa; another 
reason is that I have hired so many men that only wanted (and got) pay for 
their time, while the work they did I had to undo, or do over again myself, and 
I have made many mistakes as well as hay stacks. Sometimes I am asked what 
I pay for help, and I say "whatever you are worth." Recently I heard of a 
man that said he would "be derned if he would work for that^" and this is 
the case quite frequently, they get more than they earn. For ten years I have 
lived in the city and had to sell hay instead of feeding it, which pays better. 

Mr. Drake, of the United States Department of Agriculture, Washing- 
ton, D. C, paid me a short visit two or three years ago, and he saw some of 
my alfalfa of March seeding, but I don't know what he thinks of it. He has 
not, to my knowledge, at least, put himself on record like a Monroe County, 
Indiana, agricultural agent did, as you will soon see from the following re- 
produced correspondence, part of which was not published until now: 



SUCCESS WITH ALFALFA 39 



HOW TO GROW ALFALFA 
(Written for the World-Courier by J. N. Shirley, of Unionville) 

The cost of seeding alfalfa is estimated at $35 per acre, but for four 
years I have been seeding it, successfully, for less than one-tenth of $35 per 
acre! I sow less than one-third of the usual 20 to 25 pounds of seed per acre, 
and once I sowed less than 6 pounds per acre, getting a good stand. 

I don't prepare the seed bed by "plowing early and cultivating every week 
or ten days for a month or two," as recommended, under the false idea of 
killing all weeds, conserving moisture, etc. I sow on "honey-combed" corn 
stubble, oats stubble, potato or tomato ground with no cultivation, except what 
Jack Frost does, free of charge. I have sown it in January (before zero 
weather), but I prefer February or March to get best "honey-combed" condi- 
tion of ground. 

Uncle Sam says that there are about 220,000 seeds in a pound of ordinary 
alfalfa, and he recommends 20 pounds of best seed per acre, putting about 100 
seeds to the square foot, and he says, "Counts in old alfalfa fields show a stand 
of from one to six plants to the square foot with equal yields of hay from all. 
I find that I have healthy, thrifty plants from the start if I sow in winter be- 
cause I get the benefit of all the early rains to push the alfalfa roots down into 
the solid ground to enable the plants to withstand the intense heat and drought 
of summer and the rigors of the first winter — two good points that are lost by 
summer seeding, to say nothing of saving the cost of preparing and harrow- 
ing the ground after seeding. I do not have so much trouble with the weeds, 
either, as the late light freezes kill most of the early weeds, but do not hurt the 
alfalfa. The "deep plowing" that is recommended I am sure is all wrong and 
useless, and it entails a lot of harrowing, rolling, dragging, etc., to make the 
ground solid again like it was before plowing. 

All this work was done in the (level) cultivation of last year's crops, and 
Jack Frost is now putting the seed bed in the finest possible condition without 
any trampling of teams or tractors. He does it before good growing weather, 
too, not after the gentle growing showers of April are past, as the farmer 
must do in the "regulation-cultivation-all-summer-sow-it-just-before-a-drouth- 
comes-plan." (What a big word! But the work is bigger than the word.) 

I like to get alfalfa started early, not only to save cost of preparing the 
seed bed, but to get the use of all the early rains, as they fall, and I like the 
gentle sunshine of spring rather than the hot, dry days of midsummer to start 
alfalfa, when the other fellow so badly needs his "conserved" moisture that he 
hasn't got; but he does have plenty of weeds, despite the fact he tried to sprout 
and kill them all summer or until the 'drouth kept his alfalfa from germinat- 
ing, but had little effect on the weed seeds that his last harrowing brought 
(water-soaked) to the light and warmth of sun. 

I do not believe that "nature's seed bed" is nearly as weedy as that made 
by man in the summer time, because many weed seeds in the upper inch of 
surface were germinated last fall and, of course, are killed by winter, while 
weed seeds lower down were not killed and are sure to grow when brought up 
by the plow, cultivator or harrow, etc., no matter how often the cultivation is 
done. There are always enough weed seeds (moisture soaked and ready to 
grow as soon as brought to the surface) to make a good weed crop. Weeds 
like the poor, we have with us always. Why not start the alfalfa early and 
let the weeds alone until the "harvest" and then kill them by cutting close to 



40 SUCCESS WITH ALFALFA 

the ground, as soon as new buds or "new lungs" have nicely started at the 
base of the alfalfa plants? This will end the weeds as the alfalfa buds are 
ready to burst into new foliage, for lungs for the alfalfa plants, and to make 
hay for the farmer who "strikes while the iron is hot" — not before and not 
after it is burned up. Cut only when new buds appear. I never "clip weeds 
high" in alfalfa. It does not kill a weed to cut it above the buds on the 
branches at the weed stem. This cutting or "topping" of weeds does just the 
opposite to what is claimed for it. It makes the weeds thicker and the alfalfa 
thinner by cutting the alfalfa plant's head off and its lungs out, by making the 
weeds branch out at the same time. No wonder the farmer becomes dis- 
couraged and plows his alfalfa up, especially if he has sown 20 pounds of seed 
per acre, putting "one hundred seeds to the square foot" where only "one to 
six plants" can grow! Sow less seed, giving room to "tiller out," and never 
cut alfalfa until "new lungs" are started, and then cut at once close to the 
ground to kill the weeds, not high, to make them thicker. 



SHIRLEY IS "TACKLED" BY MONROE COUNTY 
AGRICULTURAL AGENT 

Growing of Alfalfa 

Editor, World-Courier: 

In your paper of Wednesday, April 11, there appeared an article headed 
as follows: "How to Grow Alfalfa Here" (written for the World-Courier by 
J. N. Shirley, of Unionville) , which may be so misleading to the fanners of 
this county that I feel that a statement from me is necessary. 

It might seem that Mr. Shirley was living at Unionville and had really 
grown some alfalfa there by the simple method which he advances. 

He has never grown a ton of alfalfa near Unionville, this county. 

He does own a farm near Unionville, this county, and sowed some alfalfa 
seed on it last fall which did not grow. That which he sowed last winter by the 
"Jack Frost" method is just coming through the ground in what looks more like 
a weed patch than an alfalfa field. 

Any conscientious man that knows his business should hesitate in saying 
he can do anything so absolutely absurd until he has at least done it once. 

His theory sounds good and is entirely possible and perhaps advisable in 
some counties and upon some soils, but to attempt to follow any such method 
in Monroe County at the present time would be as silly as trying to grow 
corn by planting in February. 

You perhaps noted in his article that no mention was made of using lime 
or the need of inoculation. If he did use it he should have said so ; if he didn't 
he would have been wiser to have waited another year before saying anything. 

If you want to grow alfalfa in this county, as we hope you do, and as 
we are also sure you can, and you will take our advice, you will ask your neigh- 
bor who has some alfalfa in his barn how he did it and not attempt to follow 
gome wild scheme of an experimenter who has just sown some seed. 

Q. 0. RAINBOLT, 

County Agent. 



SUCCESS WITH ALFALFA 41 

Mr. Cravens, Editor, Indianapolis, April, 1917. 

Bloomington Evening World-Courier, 
Bloomington, Ind. 
Dear Sir: — 

In the April 13, 1917, issue of your paper I m,.,ce I get quite a shock from 
one Rainbolt, County Agricultural Agent, of Monroe County, Indiana. I am 
only glad it was not a lightning bolt (it seemed more like a "thunder bolt 
from a clear sky"), perhaps it was only an "April shower that will make May 
flowers." At least, I am glad to be able to "wake up the natives" in the south 
part of Indiana again. 

For several years I have been trying to get these farmers to quit plowing 
themselves and their mnds to death and to sow ahalfa and blue grass, and 
keep their farms at home, instead of sending them down the Mississippi river 
to the Gulf of Mexico (the best part of them, at least), after every rain. 

Let high priced live stock harvest the "crops" instead of high priced, in- 
efficient farm labor. 

Mr. Rainbolt says my article that you published on April 11, 1917, "may 
be so misleading that he deems it his duty to sound a warning against the 
schemes of an experimenter," etc. Well, I guess I am an experimenter; I have 
experimented with alfalfa for twenty-one years, and hope to experiment with 
it the rest of my life. But the strange thing about it is that Mr. Rainbolt 
seems to think that I have no results to show from my experiments, except 
thirty or forty acres of alfalfa that I began sowing on Washington's birth- 
day (1917), near Unionville, Indiana. He admits this winter-sown alfalfa is 
coming up. Doesn't he think that this alfalfa that is now started will be 
ahead of any that he is "going to sow" in July or August? I am getting the 
benefit of April showers (and "Rainbolts?") now, and, as far as the "weed 
patch" that he mentions is concerned, I will just "let the weeds alone until the 
harvest," or until new "alfalfa lungs" have started; then I kill the weeds, by 
cutting alfalfa, weeds, and all, close to the ground. This gives the alfalfa a 
new impulse and the second crop springs up, as if by magic, and your weed 
trouble is over, unless too much seed per acre has been sown. Too many alfalfa 
plants, to the square foot, are the worst kind of weeds. One or two good, ma- 
ture plants, to the square foot, are plenty, and will make more (and better) hay 
than forty sickly, scrawny plants to the square foot will make. I sow only 
six or eight pounds of seed to the acre, and I sow it in February or March. 
Or, if not possible to sow on "honey-combed" ground, I sow on sun-cracked or 
wind "checked" ground, with no other cultivation except that given to previous 
year's crops, and augmented by Jack Frost, in winter. 

As I have said (for several years), I know this is contrary to "Hoyle," 
but I get good results, and I enclose herewith a sample of March, 1915, seeding 
of alfalfa, which the editor will please measure and report. I followed the 
"orthodox," or Purdue method (I am sorry to say) for about sixteen years, 
using twenty pounds of seed per acre, on ground that I broke early and culti- 
vated two or three months, in the vain attempt "to kill all the weeds " and 
"get the ground solid" again, like it was before plowing, but I failed to im- 
prove on nature's seed bed, and I lost all the spring rains and gentle sunshine 
before sowing the seed; and sometimes a drought would set in, at seeding time 
and the seeds would not germinate for a month or more, but the weeds did as 
plenty of fresh weed seeds were brought to the surface by each cultivation 
(including the last one), and I find weeds "like the poor you have with you 
always." So I am not alarmed if my alfalfa fields do look like "weed patches." 

Mr. Rainbolt warns his patrons to "ask their neighbor who has some alfalfa 



SUCCESS WITH ALFALFA 



in his barn, how he did it, and not attempt to follow some wild scheme of an 
experimenter, who has just sown some seed." How many "neighbors" in Mon- 
roe County have now, or ever did have, alfalfa in their barns? Not many, I 
assure you. 



Sows Alfalfa in Monroe County 

On March 24, 1917, the writer sowed fifteen or sixteen acres of alfalfa, 
for the Simmons Realty Company, of Bloomington, Indiana, and he was told 
the "same old story," that "alfalfa won't grow in Monroe County." I am 
used to this kind of talk. Have heard if for twenty-five years, but I know 
better. Mr. H. T. Simmons and his brother, C. L. Simmons, believe it will 
grow in Monroe and Brown Counties, and they bought four bushels of al- 
falfa seed and about five tons of inoculated alfalfa soil of me, in order to 
get "some alfalfa hay in their barns," and into their live stock, and money 
in their pockets, too. 

O, yes, Mr. Rainbolt, I use inoculated soil, but our Unionville farm 
doesn't seem to need lime very badly, if there is anything in the "blue litmus 
paper" test, that I had our tenant, Mr. F. S. Myers, make. I also tested Mr. 
Simmons' land, north-west of Bloomington, and the test failed to show lime 
needed. No wonder, when lime stone in abundance is being quarried alongside 
of this land, and, of course, it underlies all this part of the county. 

Isn't Mr. Rainbolt a little inconsistent when he says, "Any conscien- 
tious man that knows his business should hesitate in saying he can do any- 
thing so absolutely absurd, until he has at least done it once?" For the 
enlightenment of Mr. Rainbolt I will say that I have done this thing for the 
past five years, without a single failure. Will further say that I have written 
my experience with alfalfa for the last twenty years, and it has been pub- 
lished in about twenty of the leading papers "throughout the world," (U. 
S.) and some parts of Canada;" such papers as the Breeder's Gazette, Farm- 
er's Guide, Indiana Farmer, Prairie Farmer, Inland Farmer, Iowa Homestead, 
Practical Farmer, National Stockman and Fanner, Hoard's Dairyman, Up-to- 
Date Farmer, National Enquirer, Indianapolis News, Indianapolis Star, In- 
diana Daily Times, Jersey Bulletin, and several others that a "County Agent" 
should read occasionally, at least; but Mr. Rainbolt seems to have been entire- 
ly "immune" from all such stuff. He further says: "His theory sounds good, 
and is entirely possible, and perhaps advisable in some counties and upon 
some soils, but to attempt to follow any such method in Monroe County, at the 
present time, would be as silly as trying to gx*ow corn in February." If Mr. 
Rainbolt will visit our city (Indianapolis, not Unionville), I will show him one 
hundred acres of alfalfa, within two miles of the State House, and a goodly 
portion of it was sown, a la Jack Frost, while part of it was sown in April, 
on sun cracked ground, and is now fine, despite the fact that it looked more 
like a "weed patch" at first than an alfalfa field. 

A few years ago, while listening to a little speech made (in a little June 
sown alfalfa field) by a Purdue Professor, I heard this : "Some sow alfalfa in 
winter, but that is not the best time." I asked why. He replied : "Many have 
tried it and failed." That "didn't tell me anything," because many try sum- 
mer seeding and fail. I was tackled once by a Kentucky Experiment Station 
man, and I asked why he insisted upon his readers sowing red clover on 
"honey combed" ground, and yet he asked them to sow their alfalfa by the 
"regulation-cultivation-all-summer-sow-it-just-before-a-drouth-comes plan." He 
replied: "Alfalfa is not a clover." 



SUCCESS WITH ALFALFA 



43 



I claim that nature makes the best of seed beds for alfalfa, oats and 

clover, and I celebrate Washington's Birthday by using the work of Jack 

Frost— the greatest of agriculturists, most County Agents to the contrary, 

notwithstanding. 

J. N. SHIRLEY. 

P. S— Later, October 17, 1919. Please look at Fig. 31, from "Monroe 
County." Don't you think Mr. Rainbolt has lost his case? 




Pie 3i February 1919, Seeled Alfalfa, at Unionville, Monroe County, Indiana. 

Photo taken August 17, 1919. 

The plants shown in Figure 31 were pulled up, not dug up. Probably 
two feet of growth broken off. Mr. Stidd asked me how to sow this alfalfa, 
and followed directions; but he wanted to plow the ground, or at least to 
rake the weeds and tomato vines off, but I said "No." 



Editorial Rooms 



Barton W. Currie, Editor 



THE COUNTRY GENTLEMAN 

THE CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY 



Philadelphia, May 23, 1919. 

Mr. J. N. Shirley, 
116 S. Emerson Ave., 
Indianapolis, Ind., 
Dear Sir: 

The young alfalfa plants from seed sown in March are certainly remark- 
able. I wish I could get such results on my own farm in Pennsylvania but 
I have tried and so far have not succeeded. 

Your method of seeding alfalfa has many desirable points, but we have 
not been able to find many people who are able to get the results that you 
do. What is the reason? Is your soil more fertile, a natural limestone or are 

you just plain lucky? 

Very truly yours, 

J. CLYDE MARQUIS, 

JCM'C AsS0Ciate ' 



44 



SUCCESS WITH ALFALFA 



Remember this is the "Hash Department," hence the variety. 

Mr. J. Clyde Marquis, Indianapolis, May 27, 1919. 

Associate Editor, The Country Gentleman, 
Philadelphia, Pa. 
Dear Sir: 

Your letter of May 23rd is interesting and quite suggestive, too. 

You say: "I wish I could get such results on my own farm in Pennsyl- 
vania, but I have tried and so far have not succeeded," etc. Did you try my 
"Jack Frost" or "sun-cracked" method? Did you let the alfalfa — and the 
tveeds — alone until a new alfalfa growth (or new "lungs") had started before 
you did any cutting? If so, I don't understand why you failed. 

If you are like ninety-seven per cent of farmers, you set the mower 
knife high, and clipped your alfalfa "to thicken it and to kill the weeds;" 
but it can't be done that way. You thus do the opposite thing — you thicken 
the weeds and kill the alfalfa stems down to the ground for about thirty 
days, (or until a new crop of sprouts or "lungs" start) and by that time, 
the weeds have complete possession of the ground — and alfalfa — and the 
"blues" have possession of you. Are you not guilty? 

I am sending you another stem of alfalfa, seeded in January, four years 
ago, just a few days before we had zero weather. This stem is over three 
and one-half feet in length, now. Once I found an alfalfa stem seventy-three 
inches long, but it had escaped the mower knife until August 10th. 

You say my method of seeding alfalfa has many desirable points, but 
you have not been able to find many people who are able to get the results 
I do, etc. No doubt they followed the method that I suspect you have followed, 
as described in the fore part of this letter, or failed to cut yellow alfalfa. 

I am publishing a book entitled : "Success Instead of Failure With Alfalfa 
at One-Tenth the U usual Cost." Don't you want one? 

J. N. SHIRLEY, Alfalfaist. 



Almost any soil that has air over it, and water under it, will raise alfalfa. 
If you don't believe this, look out of the car window at Helmsburg, Brown 
County, Indiana, and see a "streak of alfalfa," opposite the station sown by 
the writer from a moving train, on "honey-combed" ground, in February, 
1918. If your faith weakens, "consider the lilies of the valley, (or the morn- 
ing glories and dandelions) how they grow," and sow alfalfa likewise. If 
you must prepare your ground, do it this fall, and sow alfalfa in February or 
March, with a two-way seeder, using only four or five pounds of seed per acre 
and "let it go at that," and succeed. 




Fig. 21 



-Two-Pan Seeder. 
by J. N. Shirley. 



(For sale 



Fig. 28- 



-How the Two-Fan Seeder 
works. 



, SUCCESS WITH ALFALFA 45 

Doubtless some farmers will fail to raise alfalfa by this, or any other 
method; but they themselves are usually to blame. They do not attend to the 
little details at the right time, or they do things that should not be done. In 
fact often the farmer is the worst enemy of alfalfa. He destroys the "best seed 
bed on earth," early in the best growing season, to make a worse one to be 
used in July or August, the dryest and hottest months of the year. He sows 
too much seed; and as soon as his alfalfa begins to thin itself, he plows it up 
and plants corn. He often cuts his alfalfa at the wrong stage of growth, or he 
don't cut it at all, when it is yellow and needs cutting the worst. Sometimes he 
don't inoculate or cultivate alfalfa. He "clips alfalfa," when really he thickens 
the weeds and kills his alfalfa by cutting its lungs out and helping the weeds 
to smother it to death. He should be interested and he should "study alfalfa 
and live stock for they are profitably and wonderfully made." Alfalfa, it is 
claimed will pay 5% interest on land valued at $2,200 an acre. Isn't it worth 
studying? 

N. B. — I would suggest in the final words of this little book, that farm- 
ers cultivate their crops "level and shallow"; for this is better than ridging 
and root-pruning; and the corn stubbles, etc., will be in fine condition to sow 
alfalfa on Washington's Birthday, for hay on the Fourth of next July. If 
you have ridged your corn, disc and drag this fall and sow alfalfa "a la Jack 
Frost." 

Some believe in deep cultivation! I want to ask these fellows one question: 
Should your child reach out for bread, would you chop its finger off with a 
hatchet? The plant roots are reaching out, near the surface, too, (where the 
ground is warm and rich), for plant food; and, each week, you cut the roots 
off by deep plowing, as you say, "to loosen up the ground so the roots can get 
through it"; and you take these roots off the shanks of your plow, at each end 
of the field, once a week ! ! Think a little and you certainly will quit this. 
My niothei'-in-law used to be a great strawberry raiser, and I noticed she 
merely scraped the ground with a hoe, and did not loosen it, at all. "Once, I 
used a Z. Breed Weeder alone, in cultivating a field of corn; I did not use 
a plow in it, at all. Of course, I went over the ground two or three times a 
week, but this took less time than to go over it once a week with the plow 
(as one can cultivate twenty acres a day with a one-horse weeder). I measured 
one acre of this field, at gathering time, and it husked out 91 bushels of corn. 
This tool should be called a "weed preventer, really, and is intended to be 
used "before the weeds are born." I would rather prevent the itch than to cure 
it, and I would rather use the weeder as a preventive than to plow or pull out 
the weeds; and, remember, the weeder is a shallow, level cultivator. It is a 
moisture saver, a root preserver, and it scratches "to beat the band," unless 
it is a band of old hens, in the garden. The "Old Scratch" himself, is in the 
old hens and they are sure alfalfa -preventers, if they have a chance at your 
alfalfa while it is little. When Joe Wing was a boy, he sent some alfalfa seed 
back home from the west. A year or two later, he visited his old heme and 
the first thing he said, after "greetings," was, "how is my alfalfa?" His father 
told him it did "no good." He started out toward the barn, and noticed a few 
delicate alfalfa plants. He put a headless barrel over a few of these, and in 
a short time the plants had grown out at the top of the barrel, which had 
protected them from the chickens! It was a sad blow the world received by 
the untimely death (several years ago) of Joseph E. Wing, of Ohio, one of 
the greatest advocates of alfalfa and better farming. 

J. N. SHIRLEY. 



46 SUCCESS WITH ALFALFA # 

"FOURTEEN POINTS" IN FAVOR OF 
WINTER-SOWN ALFALFA 

1 — A better and more solid seed bed can be obtained by a whole season's cul- 
tivation of previous year's crop, augmented by the work of Jack Frost, all 
winter. Mr. Jack Frost works on the seed bed after the seed is sown. 

2 — No costly work required for winter seeding, as this cost is all taxed up 
to previous year's crops, except the work done by Jack Frost free of charge. 

3 — No first year's crop is lost, as is the case when ground is cultivated all 
summer and alfalfa sown in July or August. I always cut three light crops 
from winter-sown alfalfa the first year. I did so this dry year; but the 
second crop, cut July 23rd, was only six inches high and yellow; while the 
first crop, cut on June 18th, was knee high, as was also the third crop, cut 
on September 23rd. The seeding was done in March, 1919, on '"honey- 
combed" ground. 

4 — No scarifying of seed necessary, as the freezings and thawings attend to 
this. 

5 — No loss of early rains; we use these, as they come, and we "conserve moist- 
ure" with the shade of plant growth, both of alfalfa and of weeds. (See 
Fig. 17.)" 

6 — Gentle sunshine and best growing weather are both utilized by winter 
seeding. Spring and early summer are undoubtedly the best growing sea- 
sons of all the year; while July and August are noted for their excessive 
heat and drouth. Isn't this true? Why sow alfalfa, then, in July or 
August? Is it because weeds don't grow so fast then? Neither does alfalfa 
grow so fast in hot, dry weather. 

7 — The winter seed bed has no freshly brought up to the surface moisture- 
soaked weed seeds, ready to grow before the dry alfalfa seeds can ger- 
minate. Hack Frcst killed the fall weeds; why bring up another batch of 
weed seeds before sowing alfalfa? 

8 — Not so much danger of winter-killing when alfalfa has roots as long as 
a man's arm from this early seeding. I have a photo taken October 25, 
1919, showing a March, 1919, seeded alfalfa plant with roots 38 inches long. 

9 — Not so much damage from early weeds, as the late freezes often kill all 
these before the "cold storage" alfalfa seeds germinate. 
10 — No danger of sun or wind killing if the alfalfa seeds are covered about 
an inch deep by alternate freezing and thawing, thus giving depth of 
soil; and, no danger from hard freezes, as the "one inch" layer of cold 
earth keeps the seeds from sprouting, until this soil warms up (or down, 
rather) to the seeds, and by that time, hard freezing is past. 
11 — Winter seeding is done at the most leisure time. It should be done before 

breakfast on still, clear mornings, while the ground is "honey-ccmbed." 
12 — Winter seeded alfalfa makes more hay the second year because it made a 
better root growth and tillered more the first year than did July or 
August sown alfalfa. 
13 — Winter sown alfalfa can be cultivated the first summer to combat a 
drouth, if it comes, as it did in the summer of 1919. I cultivated my last 
March seeded alfalfa severely both ways in July, using a three-horse 
sulky reinforced steel shank, thirteen narrow shoveled cultivator; and the 
roots withstood this cultivation splendidly ; while cultivation would be folly 
in July or August seeded alfalfa, no matter how bad it needs an earth 
mulch. 

14 — A thin seeding of spring barley or oats may be used with this early seeded 
. alfalfa and sown by the same "Jack Frost" method; but these crops 
should be cut for hay always, and at the "budding time" of alfalfa. Never 
let a "nurse crop" mature grain with alfalfa. This takes valuable plant 
food and moisture. I used to say "oats or barley may be sown thinly with 
alfalfa, but alfalfa should never be sown with oats or barley." The alfalfa 
should be the principal thing, always, and treated as such. 

J. N. SHIRLEY. 



SUCCESS WITH ALFALFA 



47 




Fig. 22 — Buildings on Crystal Spring 
All'alfa Farm, Monroe Co., 
Indiana. 




Fig. 24 




Fig. 21 

Figs. 21 and 24 — Some Monroe County, Indiana, Farm Products. Photo taken by 
J. N. Shirley, April, 1318, and April, 1919, respectively. 






-as. 



Fig. 



20 — Sowing water-soaked alfalfa seed from a boat in flood of 1913. 
For later views of this field, see Figs. 2 and 32. 



48 



SUCCESS WITH ALFALFA 



Figs. 34 to 41, inclusive, and their explanations are by coutesy of Inter- 
national Harvester Company, Agricultural Extension Department, Chicago. 

Fig. 35. ALFALFA ROOT SHOWING 
NODULES. If you examine an alfalfa 
root you will find tiny nodules on the 
rootlets. These are the home of the nitro- 
gen-gathering bacteria. 

Nitrogen is an important plant food, 
one of the elements necessary to plant 
life. A great deal of money is spent 
for fertilizers in order to get nitrogen. 
Yet, it is so abundant in the air that 
Hopkins says the supply over each acre 
of the earth's surface, if available, would 
meet the needs of a 100-bushel crop of 
corn every year for 500,000 years. 

But the nitrogen in the air is not 
available for plant food. In other words, 
it is not in a form that the plants can 
use. It must be changed just as our own 
food must be changed before we can use 
it. The nitrogen-gathering bacteria gather nitrogen from the air in the 
soil, and change it so that the plant can use it, and make it a part of its 
leaves, its stems, and especially its roots. Then, when the nodules and roots 
decay, nitrogen is added to the soil and is ready as food for other plants. 

This is the way that alfalfa enriches the soil. About 45 per cent of the 
nitrogen in the alfalfa plant is in the root. 



■■'- 


ll 


i 




h 





Fig. 35. 



Fig. 36. KING CORN AND QUEEN 
ALFALFA. This is a cartoonist's con- 
ception of the importance of alfalfa. An 
extension worker is performing the wed- 
ding ceremony of King Corn and Queen 
Alfalfa, while the choir sings, "Oh, What 
Will the Harvest Be?" 

Someone has said, "King Corn and 
Queen Alfalfa have only one son, Per- 
manent Prosperity." 






■• 




Fig. 36. 




Fig. 37. GROWING . ALFALFA 
MEANS BETTER HOMES. Homes like 
this are found on farms where corn and 
alfalfa are grown. 

The greatest profits in raising alfalfa 
comes in feeding it on the farm. Alfalfa 
and corn lead directly to live stock 
farming. 

Live stock farming cannot be left to 
hired hands. It means the owner must 
live on the farm. This means better 
homes, better roads, better schools and 
better opportunities for the children. 



SUCCESS WITH ALFALFA 



49 



Fig. 38. DO YOU RAISE ALFALFA? i 
The boy holding the alfalfa proudly says, "My dad grows alfalfa." 
The other replies, "I wish mine did." Which boy's father are you? 




Fig. 38. 



ALFALFA OUT-YIELDS 
OTHER HAY CROPS 

TONS 


ALFALFA 


zmmammmmm sa 


urn 

CLOVER 


■nam as 

■• 23 
■■■ 1.3 


TIMOTHY 


GRASS , 



ALFALFA RICH 

IN DIGESTIBLE PROTEIN 



ALFALFA 



WHEAT BRAN 



OATS 



CORN 



CLOVER 



TIMOTHY 



CORN FOD'R 



OAT STRAW 



WHT STRAW 




# 
M.O 

1 1.0 

9.5 

7.8 

7.5 

2.8 

2.5 

1.2 

.4 



IDAHO BUL. 66 



Fig. 40. 



Fig. 39. 



ALFALFA ON EVERY FARM 

WHY 
I- IT IS A PROFITABLE CROP 
2- IT INCREASES FARM VALUES, 

3- IT EXCELS EVERY OTHER CROP 
IN YIELD PER ACRE 
IN FEEDING VALUE 
AS A DROUTH RESISTER 
AS A SOIL ENRICHER 

4- ITS FREQUENT CUTTING 

DESTROYS WEEDS 
5- IT BALANCES THE CORN RATION 
6-IT LEADS TO LIVE STOC& FARMING 



Fig-. 41. 



PLANT GARDEN SEEDS NOW 
LAWN GRASS SEED 

(CHEAPER THAN SOD) 

OUR ODORLESS FERTILIZER 

Will Keep Your Grass Almost Evergreen 

CLOVER, TIMOTHY AND SEED CORN 

FREE — Our New Spring Catalogue — Tells All About How to Plant and When to 
Plant Seeds. Write for it. 




&, 



INDIANAPOLIS IND. 



store m 

fS/ND.- Bom 



N. Delaware 5:. 

PHONES ^ 



so 



SUCCESS WfTff ALFALFA 




Ffg. H-TVo-Monthrs-Ord Alfalfa Plants Seeded in February 1918. 
Photo taken iw April, 1918>. CHoney-com/bed" corn- stubble ground.) 




Fig. 13 — Three and five-year-old alfalfa plants; no cultivation of seed bed. 
(Corn and oats stubble ground.) 



SUCCESS WITH ALFALFA 51 



European Plan 


Modern Throughout 


Spencer 


House 


State Hotel Co. 


, Props. 


H. L. ROOD, Vice-Pres 


. and Gen. Mgr. 


Opposite Union Station 


INDIANAPOLIS, IND. 



CLOVER SEED TIMOTHY SEED 

BLUE GRASS FIELD SEEDS 



Southern Seed Co. 

23 North Alabama Street 

INDIANAPOLIS, IND. 



POULTRY SUPPLIES, DAIRY SUPPLIES, FEEDS, 
Lowden and James Barn Equipment 



52 



SUCCESS WITH ALFALFA 



The Leading Seed House in Indiana 



Garden, Farm jj 
and Flower 

SEEDS 



Farm Seeds, Seed j 
Potatoes, Fertili- 
zers, Agricultural 
Lime, Poultry stock 
and Dairy Feeds, 
Poultry Supplies. 




Everitt's Seed Store 

227 West Washington St. INDIANAPOLIS, IND. 

For Best Grades of 

ALFALFA SEED 



Write Us for Sample 
and Price 



The Indiana Seed Company 

368 South Meridian Street 
INDIANAPOLIS, - INDIANA 



A Profitable Tool for Any 
Farmer to Have 

That, briefly is the way Wm. Aitkenhead, Professor of Farm 

Mechanics at Purdue University expressed his 

endorsement of this 

Massev-Harris No. 7 Gultivator 




when he wrote our Indianapolis Branch relative to one iri use at 
the Purdue Farms. Here is his letter in full: — 

Gentlemen: — 

The No. 7 Massey-Harris Cultivator recently shipped us has 
given very satisfactory results on the Purdue East Farm. It has 
been used mainly to tear up the ground ahead of the corn planter 
and keep the ground stirred where it was desired to kill the grass. 
We have not yet used it to clean alfalfa, but expect to do so soon. 
One very desirable feature of this Cultivator is the manner in which 
it stays in the ground without any bouncing. I believe in this mach- 
ine you have an implement that will prove mighty popular as soon 
as the farmers know about it, and a profitable tool for any farmer 
to have. 

I am pleased to recommend it to anyone interested in improved 
farm equipment. 

Respectfully, 

(Signed) WM. AITKENHEAD, 

Division of Farm Mechanics 

With such an endorsement can there be any mistaking of 
its merits? It is making profits for many a farmer and will 
make them for you. Let us show you how. 

i 

MASSEY- HARRIS HARVESTER GO., Inc. 

Builders of Haying, Harvesting and Tillage Machinery 
BATAVIA NEW YORK 



ATKINS VSSS. 





4 



RECONSTRUCTION 

The War is ended, and the great civilian 
army of the Universe is ready for the 
problem of reconstruction. 

Carpenters and Mechanics who are a part 
of this great industrial army, can increase 
their efficiency and lighten their labor by 
using the famous 

Atkins &2 Saws 

There is an Atkins Saw for every purpose and the 
Atkins name on it is a guarantee that the saw will 
run easier, cut faster and hold its edge longer. 

Ask your dealer to show you 
Atkins Saws. 

Send thirty cents, coin or stamps, for Carpenter 
Nail Apron, Pencil and Saw Sense Book. 

E. C. ATKINS & CO., Inc. 

"77>. Si7i>er Steel Saw People" Established 1857 

Home Office and Factory, Indianapolis, Ind. 

Canadian Factory, Hamilton, Ont Machine Knife Factory, 

fironcnes carrying complete stacks in aU targe 
distributing ceniert at follows: . 
Atlanta New York City Sydney, N. S. W. 

Chicago Portland, Ore. Peru, France 

Memphii San Francisco 

Minneapolis Seattle 

New Orleans Vancouver, B. C. 



